I 


A  ONE-SIDED 
TOBIOGRAPHY 

[CONTAINING    THE    STORY 
OF  MY  INTELLECTUAL  LIFE 


rof 


BY 

OSCAR  KUHNS 

Professor  in    Wesleyan   University 
*  The  German  and  Swiss  Settlements  of  Colonial  Pennsylvania,'* 
*'  The  Sense  of  the  Infinite,"  etc. 


NEW  YORK:    EATON  &  MAINS 
CINCINNATI :   JENNINGS  &  GRAHAM 


n/\^^ 


Copyright,  1913,  by 
OSCAR  KUHNS 


u 


TO  THE  MEMORY 
OF  MY  GRANDFATHER 

JOHN  BROWN 

FROM  WHOM  I  INHERITED  THAT  LOVE  OP 
BOOKS  AND  READING  WHICH  HAS  ADDED 
SO  MUCH    TO  THE    HAPPINESS   OF  MY   LIFE. 


267795 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I.  Introduction 9 

II.  My  Early  Book  Life 21 

III.  Intellectual  Ideals 53 

IV.  Reading  for  Entertainment  and  Pleasure  . .  81 
V.  Poetry  and  Poets 115 

VI.  The   World-Poets 169 

VII.  What  Books  Have  Done  for  Me 223 


A  COLLEGE  MAN'S  IDEAL 

While  here  on  earth  our  lives  we  spend, 
Be  this  the  goal  toward  which  we  tend: 
A  body  sound;  a  mind  that  sees 
Deep  into  life's  strange  mysteries; 
A  soul  that  seeks  the  highest  things; 
A  heart  where  love  forever  springs; 
A  quiet  conscience;  God  for  friend; 
And  at  the  last  a  peaceful  end. 
Middletown,  Conn.,  May,  1913.  O.  K. 


^^ 


INTRODUCTION 


Far  in  the  Past  I  peer,  and  see 

A  child  upon  the  nursery  floor, 
A  child  with  books  upon  his  knee, 

Who  asks,  like  Oliver,  for  more! 
The  number  of  his  years  is  IV, 

And  yet  in  Letters  he  hath  skill. 
How  deep  he  dives  in  Fairy  lore! 

The  Books  I  loved,  I  love  them  still! 

— Andrew  Lang. 


10 


CHAPTER  I 

Introduction 

The  object  of  the  author  in  writing  this 
book  has  not  been  to  produce  a  series  of  critical 
essays,  nor  to  record  the  result  of  special 
studies  pursued  with  the  direct  purpose  of 
publication.  Rather  have  the  thoughts,  reflec- 
tions, facts,  and  fancies  contained  herein, 
been  the  slow  accumulation  of  years,  and  the 
book  itself  aims  merely  to  sum  up  the  experi- 
ences of  a  lifetime,  mostly  spent  in  the  field  of 
study  and  teaching.  In  discussing  the  books 
I  have  read,  it  is  my  purpose  to  speak  only  of 
those  which  have  had  a  deep  effect  and  abiding 
influence  upon  my  own  life,  which  have  sunk 
into  my  mind  and  heart,  and  which  have 
aroused  in  me  a  feeling  of  gratitude  for  in- 
formation received,  for  a  pleasant  hour's 
amusement,  and,  above  all,  for  uplift  of  mind 
and  soul.  I  have  not  said  much  of  books  that 
have  not  touched  me  in  some  way  or  other. 
There  are  many  such  that  I  have  read,  which 

have  either  left  me  utterly  indifferent,  or  have 

11 


'"A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGEAPHY 

impressed  upon  me  feelings  bordering  upon 
positive  dislike.  For  books  are  like  men :  they 
may  be  shallow  or  deep,  good  or  bad,  degrad- 
ing or  uplifting;  and  it  is  of  as  supreme  im- 
portance for  us  to  choose  our  books  as  it  is  to 
choose  our  friends. 

For,  after  all,  the  real  essence  of  literature 
is  not  the  outer  form,  nor  the  subject  matter 
pure  and  simple ;  it  is,  rather,  the  personality 
of  the  writer,  his  way  of  looking  at  the  great 
world-spectacle  about  him.  It  is  this  which 
distinguishes  him  from  the  mere  virtuoso  of 
words,  on  the  one  hand,  and  from  the  tech- 
nical chronicler  of  the  facts  of  science  or 
history  on  the  other  hand.  By  the  accumu- 
lation of  facts  and  the  laws  deduced  there- 
from, we  build  up  the  vast  superstructure  of 
human  science;  we  have  the  record  of  events 
and  movements  in  the  past  annals  of  man- 
kind— and  that  is  history ;  we  have  the  record 
of  the  theories  of  our  predecessors  as  to  the 
interpretation  of  the  universe  in  which  we  live, 
its  origin,  its  meaning,  and  its  final  fate — and 
that  is  philosophy  and  theology.  But,  besides 
all  this,  we  have  another  record,  not  of  facts 
or  laws  or  events,  but  of  the  thoughts  and 
feelings,  the  aspirations  and  imaginations  of 
mankind,  revealed  in  the  personal  experience 

12 


INTRODUCTION 

of  certain  individuals,  who  by  means  of  the 
written  word  have  opened  to  the  world  at 
large  the  windows  of  their  soul.  From  the 
dawn  of  civilization  to  the  present  time  men 
have  looked  out  upon  this  world  of  ours,  have 
seen  its  sadness  and  its  glory,  have  brooded 
over  its  mysteries,  have  been  gay,  serious, 
melancholy,  have  lived  and  loved  and  been 
gathered  to  their  fathers,  leaving  no  more  trace 
behind  them  than  the  foam  upon  the  crest  of 
the  ocean  wave,  or  the  snows  of  yesteryear. 
From  time  to  time,  however,  arise  certain  men, 
who  see  the  same  spectacles,  feel  the  same 
passions,  brood  over  the  same  problems, 
yet,  who,  having  the  gift  of  expressing  their 
thoughts  in  words,  bequeath  their  inner  life 
to  posterity  in  epic,  dramatic,  or  lyrical  poetry, 
or  in  the  various  forms  of  prose. 

This,  in  the  larger  sense,  is  literature — 
not  the  record  of  fact  or  information,  but 
the  personality  of  certain  representative 
minds  of  all  times  and  lands,  through  whom 
nature  and  life  are  reflected.  Literature, 
then,  representing  the  thoughts  and  feelings 
of  all  kinds  of  men,  of  all  degrees  of  goodness 
and  badness — the  cool  and  sensible,  the  senti- 
mental and  mystical,  the  kind  and  tender,  the 
harsh  and  unfeeling — must  be  as  varied  as 

13 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

men  themselves;  and  so  we  hate  good  books 
and  bad  books,  books  overflowing  with  love 
and  tenderness,  and  books  in  which  "the  heart 
seems  all  squeezed  out  by  the  head/'  For 
myself,  this  personality  of  the  writer  is  as 
important  as  the  book  itself.  And  when  I  find 
a  man  uttering  noble  thoughts  and  sentiments, 
and  his  character  harmonizes  therewith,  I  feel 
a  double  pleasure;  but  when,  as  may  happen, 
I  see  a  man  uttering  the  same  thoughts  whose 
character  is  small  and  mean,  and  not  in 
harmony  with  what  he  says,  I  feel  a  sense  of 
irritation,  and,  as  Socrates  says,  in  a  similar 
case,  the  better  he  speaks  the  greater  my  irri- 
tation. 

There  is  always  a  great  temptation  in  dis- 
cussing such  a  theme  as  one's  reading,  espe- 
cially in  the  case  of  the  great  writers,  to  fall 
into  a  certain  lack  of  sincerity,  a  warm- 
ing up  oneself  to  enthusiasm  for  the  thing 
discussed,  like  those  teachers  spoken  of  by 
a  French  critic,  who  are  paid  to  become  en- 
thusiastic over  the  classics  aux  heures  de 
legons.  And  so  we  often  see  men  discussed  as 
if  they  were  utterly  without  fault,  beautiful 
passages  selected  and  given  as  typical  of  the 
whole,  in  such  a  way  that  a  false  impression 
is  often  given,  and  the  young  student  finds 

14 


INTRODUCTION 

himself  at  a  loss  how  to  admire  many  things 
in  a  writer  his  teacher  has  taught  him  to  look 
on  as  impeccable. 

Then,  again,  there  is  the  universal  tendency 
to  regard  great  writers  as  gods,  and  the  man 
who  dares  to  criticize  them  is  hooted  and 
jeered,  a^  Ben  Jonson  was  when  he  ventured 
to  criticize  certain  faults  in  Shakespeare, 
^Svhom  I  love,"  he  says,  "as  much  as  any  man 
this  side  of  idolatry."  Time  especially  places 
a  halo  around  all  great  men;  the  human  ele- 
ment is  gone  and  they  become  demigods.  So 
Ion  looked  on  Homer  as  the  final  authority  in 
all  things ;  Dante  is  called  "the  divine,"  while, 
in  a  different  field,  George  Washington  seems 
no  longer  a  real  man,  but  a  symbol  of  patriot- 
ism, and  the  type  of  the  ideal  American. 

In  order  to  get  a  true  perspective  in  read- 
ing, we  must  change  all  this.  We  must  look 
on  even  the  greatest  of  men  as  like  unto  our- 
selves, and,  while  we  admire  their  greatness, 
not  fail  to  recognize  their  shortcomings.  And 
yet,  in  writing  this  book,  I  have  preferred  to 
dwell  on  the  greatness  of  the  men  I  discuss, 
on  the  gratitude  I  feel  for  what  they  have 
meant  to  me,  touching  only  lightly  on  their 
failings.  In  similar  manner  I  have  left  out 
many  books  I  have  read  simply  because  the 

15 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

general  impression  was  one  of  disagreeable- 
ness  rather  than  gratitude.  Moreover,  in 
trying  to  know  the  best  in  the  world,  I  have 
felt  it  necessary  to  exercise  a  certain  kind  of 
renunciation  in  my  general  reading,  to  give 
up,  for  instance,  the  idea  of  constant  com- 
munion with  all  poets,  or  all  even  of  the  great 
poets.  No  man  can  constantly  read  over  and 
over  all  of  the  great  writers  of  all  lands.  He 
can  do  that  once  in  order  to  get  a  scholarly 
perspective;  but  for  his  daily  reading  he  must 
cultivate  a  process  of  selection,  and,  especially 
in  the  literature  of  distant  lands  and  times, 
devote  himself  chiefly  to  those  writers  who 
stand  out  like  mountain  peaks  above  the  plain 
of  mediocrity. 

Every  student  of  literature  finds  his  reading 
di}ddedJat£LJtwjQL4ia£±sj  first,  those  books  he 
reads  from  the  scholar's  desire  to  know  the 
development  of  literature;  and,  secondly, 
those  books  which  grip  him  and  win  his  1^^^ 
This  latter  experience  differs  with  different 
persons.  No  man  can  tell  me  just  what  books 
I  shall  love  or  not;  I  must  find  that  out  for 
myself.  After  all,  true  reading  is  not  select- 
ing with  unerring  aim  just  the  best  books  for 
us,  nor  the  servile  following  the  advice  and 
dogmatic  assertion  of  those  who  claim  to  know 

16 


INTRODUCTION 

what  are  the  best  hundred  or  any  other  num- 
ber of  books.  It  is,  rather,  the  gradual  train- 
ing of  a  taste  for  books,  a  feeling  for  the  better 
kind,  an  unlearning  or  a  distaste  for  the 
lighter,  more  useless  kind.  It  is  trying  all 
books  and  holding  fast  to  those  which  are 
good.  This  every  man  must  do  for  himself. 
No  true  reader  should  give  up  his  own  inde- 
pendent judgment  to  follow  blindly  that  of 
other  men.  Imyself  have  read  many  trashy^ 
useless  books,  but  I  do  not  know  that  I  feel 
badly  about  it.  They  fed  my  love  for  reading, 
when  perhaps  more  solid  books  might  have 
hindered  it.  They  gave  me  many  a  pleasant 
hour  and  pastime.  If  I  have  acquired  better 
habits  of  reading,  it  is  only,  as  Seneca  would 
say,  after  many  wanderings  to  and  fro. 

Another  thing  I  have  come  to  see  is  that 
mere  pleasure  is  not  the  chief  criterion  in 
reading.  Often  the  pleasure  only  comes  after 
a  great  deal  of  drudgery ;  a  true  reader  should 
train  himself  to  read  even  dry  books,  for  the 
sake  of  the  light  they  will  throw  on  the  sub- 
ject he  is  studying.  Then,  often,  the  same 
books  will  afford  him  pleasure.  I  have  read 
many  books  from  a  sense  of  duty,  not  being 
deeply  interested  at  the  time,  but  knowing  they 
were  necessary  to  round  out  a  period,  or  to 

17 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

complete  my  view  of  certain  fields  of  study. 
Afterwards  I  have  been  glad  I  have  done  so. 
The  pleasure  of  having  a  complete  view  of  a 
subject,  in  all  its  phases,  whether  in  philoso- 
phy, literature,  or  history,  is  of  a  different 
kind  from  the  pleasure  given  by  yielding  up 
to  the  purely  aesthetic  enjoyment  of  books,  or 
by  a  deepening  insight  into  character  and  life ; 
and  yet  it  is  just  as  deep  and  satisfactory. 

This  book  is  l^gggl^  b^sed  on  notes  which 
have  been  taken  down  during  the  course  of 
many  years,  quotations  in  poetry  and  prose, 
notes  of  facts,  as  well  as  thoughts  and  reflec- 
tions of  my  own.  Many  of  the  latter  were 
often  made  in  the  flash  of  a  moment,  at  home, 
walking  in  the  country,  lying  on  the  seashore, 
or  watching  the  sunset  from  the  western 
windows  of  my  quiet  college  study.  Not 
the  least  important  part  of  my  book  life  has 
been  the  notes  I  have  taken.  These  notes  were 
not  made  on  slips  of  paper,  alphabetically  ar- 
ranged, so  as  to  be  consulted  at  any  moment. 
My  object  has  not  been  to  use  the  notes  as 
references,  but  to  fill  my  mind  and  memory 
with  the  important  things  I  have  read.  Hence 
my  notes  have  been  made  in  blank  books 
small  enough  to  be  carried  in  the  po£^^ 
These  I  take  with  me  in  my  walks,  read  as  I 

18 


INTRODUCTION 

go,  learn  the  quotations,  or  run  over  the  gist  of 
some  important  book.  Many  of  the  passages, 
such  as  those  from  Shakespeare,  Plato,  etc., 
I  have  copied  a  number  of  times.  Without 
these  notebooks,  and  my  constant  review  of 
them  in  hours  of  leisure  or  in  the  intervals  of 
more  severe  study,  the  benefits  of  my  reading 
would  be  far  less  than  they  are  now. 

In  writing  this  book  I  have  tried  to  be  sin- 
cere, free  from  literary  cant,  endeavoring  to 
say  nothing  merely  for  the  sake  of  the  effect 
it  might  have.  I  have  been  more  concerned 
about  my  own  heart  and  mind  than  the  prob- 
able critical  attitude  of  the  prospective  reader. 
I  am  fully  aware  that  what  I  am  undertaking 
here  is  a  delicate  thing.  I  have  led  a  quiet  life ; 
have  known  few  distinguished  people,  and 
have  no  anecdotes  to  tell  or  opinions  to  ex- 
press concerning  them.  I  have  had  few  oppor- 
tunities to  mingle  with  the  great  men  in  the 
various  walks  of  life,  and  the  opportunities 
I  have  had,  I  am  afraid,  have  not  been  utilized 
as  much  as,  perhaps,  they  ought  to  have  been. 
For  many  years  I  have  lived  in  a  small  college 
community  in  a  quiet  old  New  England  town, 
busy  with  my  classes  and  my  books.  What 
has  such  a  mind  to  say  of  interest  to  the 
world?    Yet;  on  the  other  hand,  I  have  had  a 

19 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

lifelong  fondness  for  and  communion  with 
that  one  great  society  on  earth,  ^^the  noble 
living  and  the  noble  dead/'  I  have  read  over 
and  over  again  many  of  the  great  writers  of 
all  lands  and  all  nations.  Certain  thoughts, 
inward  experiences,  feelings  of  pleasure  and 
uplift  have  come  to  me  from  time  to  time; 
and,  somehow  or  other,  I  have  felt  an  impulse 
to  write  them  down.  I  sincerely  hope  that 
none  of  these  things,  though  at  times  of  a  per- 
sonal and  intimate  nature,  will  produce  the 
effect  of  literary  vanity,  self-complacency,  or 
affectation.  Following  the  injunction  of  Tho- 
reau,  I  have  been  continually  watching  the 
moods  of  my  own  mind,  as  the  astronomer 
watches  the  aspect  of  the  heavens,  and  I  hope 
that  it  may  not  be  altogether  useless  to  regis- 
ter the  results  of  a  not  very  long  life  faithfully 
spent  in  this  wise.  I  have  sought,  then,  only 
to  give  a  plain,  straightforward  account  of 
the  book  life  of  a  man  in  ordinary  circum- 
stances, yet  one  who  has  always  felt  a  pas- 
sionate love  for  literature. 


v- 


20 


MY  EARLY  BOOK  LIFE 


21 


Much  have  I  traveled  in  the  realms  of  gold, 
And  many  goodly  states  and  kingdoms  seen; 
Round  many  western  Islands  have  I  been 

Which  bards  in  fealty  to  Apollo  hold. 

— John  Keats. 


22 


CHAPTER  II 
My  Early  Book  Life 

It  is  now  many  years  since  first  I  began 
my  pilgrimage  in  the  world  of  books.  At 
first,  to  use  the  phrase  of  Agassiz,  I  was  like 
a  child  wandering  on  the  seashore,  picking 
up  miscellaneous  pebbles  and  shells.  I  knew 
not  what  I  wanted,  but  read  whatever  at- 
tracted my  curiosity.  But  from  the  very  be- 
ginning I  was  filled  with  an  intense  eagerness 
for  reading,  a  taste  which  has  afforded  me 
the  deepest  pleasure,  and,  I  believe,  the  great- 
est profit  of  my  life. 

I  was  born  in  Columbia,  a  small  country 
town^  in  Lancaster  County,  Pennsylvania,  in 
the  heart  of  the  agricultural  district,  fondly 
called  by  its  inhabitants  ^^the  garden  county 
of  the  United  States."  No  one  who  has  once 
seen  this  beautiful  country,  with  its  fertile 
fields  and  its  magnificent  ^^Swisser'^  barns,  so 
called  from  Switzerland,  the  ancestral  father- 
land of  most  of  the  inhabitants,  will  blame  the 

1  In  1789,  when  Congress  was  discussing  the  subject  of  a  site  for  the 
seat  of  the  National  Government,  Colxunbia  came  within  a  few  votes  of 
being  selected. 

23 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY     ^ 

Lancaster  Countians  for  being  piroud  of  their 
native  land.  The  history  of  the  county  is  just 
as  interesting  as  its  fields  are  fertile,  and 
resembles  in  certain  respects  that  of  early 
New  England.  The  first  settlement,  in  1710, 
was  purely  religious,  and  was  made  by  Swiss 
Quakers  from  the  cantons  of  Bern  and  Zurich, 
Switzerland,  who,  forced  to  leave  their  native 
hills  and  valleys,  on  account  of  their  refusal 
to  take  oath  or  to  perform  military  service, 
accepted  the  invitation  of  William  Penn  to 
take  part  in  his  newly  established  colony — or 
"Holy  Experiment,"  as  he  called  it — in  Penn- 
sylvania. It  was  the  same  spirit  that  stirred 
the  hearts  of  the  Pilgrim  Fathers  that  led 
these  prosperous  farmers  of  the  beautiful 
Emmenthal  in  the  canton  of  Bern  and  the 
green  shores  of  Lake  Zurich,  to  cross  the 
ocean  and  settle  in  the  midst  of  an  unknown 
wilderness.  Let  others  boast  of  their  New 
England  ancestry.  The  natives  of  Lancaster 
County  may  well  be  proud  of  their  descent 
from  these  hardy  sons  of  that  land  of  snow- 
crowned  Alps,  blue  lakes  and  grassy  lawns, 
which  has  not  only  become  the  "Playground 
of  Europe,''  but  the  symbol  of  a  free  and 
happy  people. 

It  has  become  the  custom  in  certain  recent 

24 


MY  EARLY  BOOK  LIFE 

publications  to  represent  these  Lancaster 
County  farmers  as  narrow,  opposed  to  all 
education  and  culture.  This  is  absolutely 
false.  'Whatever  blame  attaches  to  them, 
however,  must  be  shared  in  completely  by 
myself.  For  two  hundred  years  all  the  mem- 
bers of  my  family,  both  on  father's  and 
mother's  side,  have  been  bom  in  the  city  of 
Lancaster  itself  or  in  the  immediate  country 
round  about;  and  it  was  a  direct  ancestor 
of  mine.  Bishop  John  Herr,  who  with  Martin 
Kendig,  was  a  leader  of  the  first  settlers.^ 

What  time  these  farmers  of  the  olden  time 
had  to  spare  from  the  hard  and  often  sordid 
labors  of  the  farm  was  devoted  to  the  read- 

1  Rev.  John  Herr  was  bom  in  Switzerland  in  1639.  He  married  Elizabeth 
Kendig,  daughter  of  John  Kendig  and  Jane  Meyli,  all  born  in  the  Canton 
of  Zurich,  Switzeriand.  His  great-granddaughter,  Susanna  Groff,  married 
my  mother's  grandfather,  Frederick  Brown,  who  is  said  to  have  been 
born  on  shipboard  while  his  parents  were  coming  over  from  the  North 
of  Ireland.  Frederick  Brown  was  a  soldier  in  the  American  Revolution, 
having  accompanied  Benedict  Arnold  in  his  march  against  Quebec.  The 
Browns  were  among  the  earliest  Methodists  in  Lancaster  County,  and 
were  related  to  Father  Henry  Boehm,  Francis  Asbury's  traveling  com- 
panion. 

On  my  father's  side,  I  am  descended  from  George  Kuntz,  as  the  name 
was  then  spelled,  of  Lancaster,  Pa.,  who  was  a  soldier  in  the  American 
Revolution,  having  enlisted  at  the  early  age  of  thirteen  years  and  four 
months,  according  to  the  records  of  the  Pension  Bureau  in  Washington. 
His  wife,  Susan,  daughter  of  Caspar  and  Gertrude  Hubert,  received  a 
pension  at  his  death.  George  Kuntz  was  the  great-grandson  of  John 
Matthew  Kuntz,  bom  about  1650.  His  father  was  Theobald  Kuntz,  one 
of  the  founders  of  the  First  Reformed  Church  at  Lancaster,  and  his  mother 
was  Mary  Margaret  Fortund,  of  French  Huguenot  descent.  The  name 
is  now  spelled  Forney.  John  W.  Forney,  Lincoln's  War  Secretary,  be- 
longed to  this  family. 

25 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGKAPHY 

ing  of  the  Bible,  the  hymn  book,  and  certain 
books  of  religious  edification :  Arndt's  Wahres 
Christ  en  thum,  if  they  were  Lutherans ;  Stark's 
Gebet-buch,  if  Eeformed;  and  Van  Bragt's 
Blutige  Schauplatz  oder  Martyrer  Spiegel,  if 
they  were  Quakers  or  Mennonites.  To  show 
that  they  were  not  altogether  without  the  love 
for  reading,  it  is  of  interest  to  note  that  the 
Martyrer-Spiegel  above  alluded  to  was  pub- 
lished by  the  members  of  the  Ephrata  Com- 
munity in  1748.  This  book,  which  gives  the 
persecutions  and  sufferings  of  those  Chris- 
tians opposed  to  war,  Anabaptists,  Quakers, 
or  Mennonites,  was  the  largest  book  published 
in  America  up  to  that  time. 

Many  other  books,  all  of  a  religious  nature, 
were  read  by  these  people.  I  remember  some 
years  ago  going  to  the  Bowman  farm  in  Lan- 
disville,  Lancaster  County,  once  in  possession 
of  my  mother's  family,  and  being  directed  to 
the  garret,  where  I  found  in  a  box  a  number 
of  these  old  books.  They  are  before  me  as  I 
write,  among  them  being  Gerhard  Tersteegen's 
Geistliche  Blumengartlein,  made  up  of  short 
poems  on  all  sorts  of  religious  subjects,  the  gos- 
pel of  Nicodemus,  the  story  of  Geneveva, 
daughter  of  the  Duke  of  Brabant,  one  of  the 
many  forms  of  the  "patient  Griselda"  motif  in 

26 


MY  EARLY  BOOK  LIFE 

literature.  One  book  especially  gave  me  pleas- 
ure in  this  find  in  Landisville,  an  old  Lutheran 
German  hymn  book.  As  a  young  child  I  had 
often  heard  my  mother  tell  of  the  death  of  her 
mother,  who  was  born  on  this  farm  at  Landis- 
ville,  and  how  she  sang,  as  she  died,  the  words 
of  an  old  German  hymn,  beginning  with  the 

^  Lasset  ab  llir  meine  Lieben, 

Lasset  ab  von  Traurigkeit; 

and  which  I  may  translate  as  follows: 
Cease,  O  cease,  my  friends,  from  weeping. 

Let  your  grief  no  more  endure. 
Why  should  sorrow  fill  your  bosom, 

Since  for  me  this  thing  is  sure? 
All  my  pain  and  trouble  past, 
I  shall  soon  be  home  at  last; 
Where  in  joy  that  ceases  never, 
With  the  Blest  I'll  live  forever. 

I  had  never  been  able  to  find  the  words  in 
any  book,  and  now,  to  my  delight,  I  found 
them  here  in  this  collection  of  German  hymns 
with  a  beautifully  hand-painted  book-plate. 

The  deep  religious  nature  of  these  people 
was  shown  in  their  love  and  reverence  for  the 
Bible.  Nor  were  their  Bibles  mere  ornaments 
of  the  center-table;  they  formed  the  daily 
food  of  those  who  possessed  them.  The  people 
of  those  days  were  Bibelfest;  their  memories 
were  stored  with  the  best  passages;  this  is 

27 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

true  not  only  of  adults,  but  of  little  children 
as  well.  The  same  statements  apply  to  the 
hymn  book,  which  was  held  in  almost  the 
same  reverence  as  the  Bible.  It  was  not  left 
in  the  pew  at  church,  but  shared  with  the 
Holy  Book  the  honor  of  being  read  constantly 
and  learned  by  heart.  Many  examples  of  this 
are  given  by  Muhlenberg  in  his  Hallesche 
Nachrichten;  as,  for  instance,  the  pathetic 
death  of  a  six-year-old  boy.  When  too  weak 
himself  to  sing  the  hymns,  ^^deren  er  eine 
schone  Anzahl  gelernet/^  he  would  ask  his  par- 
ents to  sing ;  and  when  his  desire  had  been  ful- 
filled, he  gave  his  father  a  loving  farewell  kiss, 
and  w^hile  his  parents  sang, 

"Breit  aus  die  Fliigel  beide, 
O  Jesu,  Meine  Freude, 
Und  nimm  dein  Kiichlein  ein/* 

he  fell  softly  and  peacefully  asleep  in  his 
Saviour.^ 

I  have  given  the  above  details  simply  to 
show  that  among  the  Pennsylvania  Germans 

1  Still  more  inspiring  is  the  story  of  John  Christian  Schell,  of  Mohawk 
Valley,  New  York,  and  his  wife  and  four  sons,  who  kept  at  bay  a  band  of 
sixty-four  Indians  and  Tories,  all  night  long,  shooting  at  them  from  the 
windows,  and  keeping  up  their  courage  by  singing  lustily  Luther's  battle 
hymn,  "Ein'  feste  Burg  ist  unser  Gott";  emphasizing,  we  may  well  be- 
lieve, especially  the  lines, 

Und  wenn  die  Welt  voll  Teufel  wSr, 

Und  woUt'  uns  gar  verschlingen, 

So  fiirchten  wir  uns  nicht  so  sehr, 

Es  muss  uns  doch  gelingen. 

28 


MY  EARLY  BOOK  LIFE 

reading  was  widespread,  although  intensive 
and  narrow  in  the  number  of  books.  My  own 
mother  was  very  fond  of  reading,  a  fondness 
which  she  inherited  from  her  father.  It  was 
with  a  good  deal  of  interest  that,  some  years 
ago,  I  came  across  a  book  that  once  belonged 
to  him,  a  book  he  had  bought  when  a  young 
man  and  on  the  title-page  of  which  he  had 
written  these  words:  "I,  John  Brown,  will 
buy  good  books,  God  helping  me." 

It  was  among  these  simple  folk  that  I  was 
born,  and  from  them  I  derived  whatever  quali- 
ties I  possess.  While  I  was  still  a  child,  how- 
ever, my  parents  moved  to  a  large  city,  and 
here  I  found  books  in  plenty,  to  feed  the  ris- 
ing fondness  for  reading.  About  the  earliest 
experience  of  this  kind  that  I  can  remember 
is  connected  with  the  Sunday  school  of  the 
Methodist  church^  of  which  my  father  for  many 
years  was  a  superintendent.  At  that  time  there 
was  a  custom — a  valuable  one,  I  have  always 
thought — of  encouraging  the  children  to  com- 
mit verses  of  the  Bible  to  memory.  A  green 
ticket  was  given  for  every  ten  verses  of  Scrip- 
ture  learned   by   heart.      Ten   green    tickets 

1  This  is  the  Hanson  Place  M.  E.  Church  of  Brooklyn,  N.  Y.  The 
Sunday  school,  at  that  time,  was  the  largest  Methodist  school  in  the 
country.  My  father,  William  J.  Kuhns,  was  superintendent  of  the  Infant 
Class.  Mayor  Samuel  Booth  and  John  French  were  superintendents  of 
the  whole  school. 

29 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

could  be  exchanged  for  one  yellow  ticket,  and 
ten  yellow  tickets  bought  a  book.  The  book 
I  obtained  in  this  way,  The  Windows  of  the 
Soul,  is  the  first  book  I  can  remember  to  have 
read. 

Then  there  was  the  Sunday  school  library, 
fairly  well  filled  with  good  books.  Among 
them  was  a  complete  set  of  Oliver  Optic's 
stories;  but  one  Sunday  a  distinguished  D.D. 
— his  name  was  not  Fiddle,  but  well  might 
have  been — came  to  the  library,  and  was  hor- 
ror-struck to  see  these  books  there,  and  they 
were  withdrawn  from  circulation.  I  can  yet 
see  the  clamorous  crowd  of  boys  who  indig- 
nantly demanded  the  return  of  their  favorite 
author.  Times  have  changed  since  then,  and 
with  them  the  attitude  of  pious  people  toward 
fiction.  My  reading,  like  that  of  most  boys, 
began  on  a  law  plane.  I  reveled  in  the  famous 
dime  novels  published  by  Munro,  in  the  Boys 
and  Girls'  Weekly,  Fireside  Companion,  New 
York  Ledger,  and  the  Waverly  Magazine. 
Certain  parts  of  Jack  Harkaway  and  Alone  in 
the  Pirate's  Lair  still  linger, .  in  a  shadowy 
way,  in  my  memory.  As  I  write  these  lines 
the  names  of  many  old  favorites  rise  up  again 
before  me — Thaddeus  of  Warsaw^,  Cud  jo's 
Cave,  Frank  on  a  Gunboat,  Last  Days  of 


MY  EAELY  BOOK  LIFE 

Pompeii,  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin,  and  many 
others. 

More  solid  reading  came  in  gradually  in  the 
form  of  books  I  found  in  the  libraries  of  the 
Sunday  school  and  the  Young  Men's  Christian 
Association.  It  was  here  I  got  the  taste  for 
history  which  has  never  left  me.  Prescott's 
books  on  Peru,  Mexico,  and  Spain  were 
sources  of  never- failing  pleasure,  as  were  like- 
wise Motley's  Dutch  Republic,  Gibbon's  De- 
cline and  Pall,  and  especially  Milman's  His- 
tory of  Latin  Christianity.  This  last  named 
was  read  through  in  one  huge  draught,  night 
after  night,  till  the  whole  seven  volumes  were 
finished.  To  Milman  I  owe  the  first  general 
conception  of  the  transition  from  ancient 
times  to  the  Middle  Ages,  and  thence  to  mod- 
ern times,  which  it  has  become  a  pleasure  in 
later  years  to  fill  out. 

Strangely  enough  for  a  boy,  dreamy  and 
sentimental,  as  I  undoubtedly  was  at  that 
time,  I  acquired  a  taste  for  scientific  litera- 
ture, and  I  read  with  considerable  interest, 
if  not  with  profit,  the  popular  books  of  such 
men  as  Figuier,  Proctor,  John  Tyndall,  and 
others.  A  friend  loaned  me  the  back  numbers 
of  the  Popular  Science  Monthly,  and  I  read 
these  from  the  beginning  up  to  that  time.    My 

81 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGEAPHY 

father  took  regularly  the  Scientific  American, 
which  I  would  look  over  with  more  or  less 
interest;  an  interest  which,  however,  was  far 
inferior  to  that  with  which  I  pored  over  the 
pages  of  the  Guide  to  and  Beauty  of  Holiness, 
to  which  my  mother,  who  had  a  genius  for 
religion,  subscribed.  The  perusal  of  this,  the 
ofilcial  organ  of  Sanctification,  at  the  early 
age  of  ten  or  twelve  years,  undoubtedly  gave 
my  mind  its  first  impulse  toward  the  study 
of  transcendentalism,  which  has  made  Plato 
and  Emerson  among  the  most  constantly  read 
authors  in  the  later  years  of  my  life. 

All  the  above  books  were  rather  episodes  in 
the  story  of  my  literary  development  and 
were  read  without  set  purpose,  just  as  fancy 
led.  Early  in  life,  however,  this  fancy  became 
a  passion  for  learning  and  literature.  I  was 
unfortunately  situated  and  had  to  leave  school 
and  go  to  work.  Yet  in  the  odd  moments,  at 
business,  on  the  way  thither  and  back,  on 
holidays  and  in  the  evenings,  I  managed  to 
find  some  time  in  which  to  indulge  that  pas- 
sion for  reading  which  noiw  became  a  consum- 
ing fire.  One  can  imagine  the  discouragement 
which  naturally  accompanied  such  apparently 
hopeless  efforts.  In  fact,  this  feeling  or  ten- 
dency to  discouragement  has  never  left  me 

32 


MY  EARLY  BOOK  LIFE 

wholly.  It  has  probably  been  due  to  over- 
work, nervous  weariness,  or  something  of  that 
sort,  but  from  time  to  time  a  sense  of  the 
futility  of  all  knowledge,  the  immense  num- 
ber of  books  to  read,  and  the  little  time  to 
do  it  in,  has  come  over  me  and  for  the  time 
being  put  an  end  to  my  joy  in  study  and  read- 
ing. I  remember  reading  Dahn's  monumental 
Geschichte  der  Romanischen  Volker  with  the 
greatest  interest  and  enthusiasm,  and  it 
seemed  to  me  that  I  was  gaining  a  fairly  com- 
plete knowledge  of  the  subject  he  treated. 
And  then  I  turned  to  his  bibliography,  over 
a  hundred  pages  of  authorities  he  had  con- 
sulted, and  a  feeling  akin  to  despair  took 
possession  of  me,  as  I  thought  how  superficial 
must  ever  be  my  knowledge  compared  to  his. 
But  then  a  wiser  mood  would  come  to  me,  and 
I  would  remember  how  much  pleasure  and 
profit  such  men  as  Thoreau  had  obtained 
from  the  study  of  nature  without  being  expert 
botanists  or  geologists;  and  the  thought  of 
my  own  purpose  in  reading  history,  not  to  get 
a  minute  knowledge  of  any  one  particular 
period  or  country,  but  a  general  conspectus  of 
the  course  of  civilization,  would  come  to  com- 
fort me,  as  I  could  see  that,  after  all,  I  could 

get  what  I  wanted  and  what  suited  me. 

33 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

Another  source  of  discouragement  has  been 

the  interruption   from   time  tt>  time  of  my 

interest  in  and  love  for  reading.     There  have 

been  times  when  I  no  longer  felt  the  charm  of 

books  and  I  would  fear  I  had  lost  forever 

my  love  for  them.    But  such  moods  have  lasted 

only  a  short  time;  for  soon,  after  my  tired 

mind  and  spirit  had  time  to  rest,  the  old  love 

would  come  back.    So  that  as  I  look  back  over 

the  whole  course  of  my  life  I  can  see  how 

steady  and,  in  general,  how  unchanging  has 

been  the  comfort  and  help  that  books  and 

reading  have  brought  to  me;  and  I  can  say 

with  truth  that  they  have 

been  an  angel  to  me,  coming  not 
In  fitful  visions,  but  beside  me  ever. 
And  never  failing  me. 

It  was  very  early  that  a  love  for  languages 
became  developed.  When  I  was  thirteen  years 
old  I  obtained  a  copy  of  Perrault's  Fables  in 
French,  with  an  interlinear  translation,  and 
from  that  time  down  to  the  present,  the  study 
of  languages  has  been  a  favorite  with  me. 
Much  of  this  study,  as  I  see  it  now,  was  pain- 
fully futile.  I  picked  up  an  old  copy  of  Bopp's 
Comparative  Grammar,  and  although  I  knew 
nothing  of  Sanskrit,  Persian,  and  other  lan- 
guages quoted  there,  a  feeling  of  thoroughness, 

34 


MY  EARLY  BOOK  LIFE 

what  the  Germans  call  dieses  verfluchte 
Griindlichkeits  Gefuhl^  made  me  flounder 
through  it  from  beginning  to  end.  As  I  look 
back  it  seems  to  me  that  the  weeks  and  months 
I  spent  on  that  book  were  absolutely  wasted, 
except,  perhaps,  for  the  dogged  determination 
I  developed  to  go  on  to  the  end. 

Brighter  memories  are  connected  with  the 
study  of  Italian.  Here,  again,  my  method  was 
unconventional.  I  had  learned  from  Nathan- 
iel Bowditch  and  Lord  Macaulay  the  idea  of 
beginning  the  study  of  a  language  by  reading 
the  New  Testament  in  the  language  in  ques^j^ 
tion.  By  this  means  I  soon  learned  the  more 
common  words  and  forms.  After  this  I  pro- 
cured a  copy  of  Dante's  Divina  Commedia, 
a  translation  of  the  same,  and  a  grammar  and 
dictionary.  I  plowed  my  way  through  this 
so  successfully  that  in  a  few  months  I  could 
read  practically  anything  in  Italian  without 
a  dictionary. 

Rarely  in  my  life  have  I  been  so  exalted  in 
spirit  as  I  was  then  through  the  noble  words 
of  Dante,  even  though,  at  that  time,  much  of 
the  meaning  escaped  me.  One  experience  espe- 
cially stands  out  in  my  memory.  It  was  mid- 
night, "in  the  silence  of  the  sleep-time,"  when 
I  finished  the  Vita  Nuova  and  w^ent  to  bed 

35 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

filled  with  the  last  words  of  that  strangely 
beautiful  book  ringing  in  my  ears  like  ^^the 
sound  of  the  flute  in  the  ears  of  the  mystic/' 
words  which  were  a  prophecy  of  the  Divina 
Commedia:  "After  this  sonnet  there  appeared 
to  me  a  wonderful  vision,  in  which  I  saw 
things  which  made  me  purpose  to  say  no  more 
of  this  blessed  lady  until  I  might  more 
worthily  speak  of  her.  And  to  come  to  that, 
I  study  as  much  as  I  can,  as  she  knows  well. 
So  that  if  it  be  the  pleasure  of  Him  by  whom 
all  things  live,  that  my  life  be  spared  yet  a 
few  years,  I  hope  to  say  of  her  that  which  has 
never  yet  been  said  of  any  mortal  woman. 
And  then  may  it  please  Him,  who  is  Lord  of 
all  courtesy,  that  my  soul  shall  go  to  see  the 
glory  of  its  Lady,  who  gloriously  gazes  into 
the  face  of  Him  qui  est  per  omnia  saecula 
benedictus/^ 

Longfellow,  Tennyson,  Swinburne,  Keats, 
and  Byron  were  my  favorite  poets  then. 
Browning,  Wordsworth,  Matthew  Arnold 
came  later.  One  summer  I  spent  almost  en- 
tirely in  Shakespeare.  I  procured  his  works 
in  the  Tauchnitz  edition  of  single  plays,  and 
carried  them  in  my  pocket.  I  went  over  them 
three  times  that  summer,  once  to  get  the  plot 
and  the  swing;  then  to  look  up  meanings  of 

36 


MY  EAELY  BOOK  LIFE 

obscure  expressions;  and,  thirdly,  to  commit 
to  memory  the  great  passages.  Many  of  the 
lines  I  then  learned  still  linger  in  my  memory, 
a  blessing  in  many  an  hour  since  then,  when, 

In  the  sessions  of  sweet  silent  thought 
I  summon  up  remembrance  of  past  years. 

As  I  look  over  these  early  years  of  my  read- 
ing life,  desultory  and  without  any  guiding 
hand  to  lead  me,  two  things  stand  out  above 
the  rest.  One  is  the  intense  joy  and  pleasure 
that  came  to  me  when  buried  in  the  pages  of 
some  favorite  book.  I  can  literally  apply  to 
myself  the  words  of  Wordsworth, 

Bliss  was  it  in  that  time  to  be  alive, 
To  be  young  was  very  heaven. 

A  sort  of  mystic  fervor  would  come  over  me, 
the  hours  would  pass  away  unperceived,  and, 
as  most  of  my  reading  had  to  be  done  at  night, 
there  have  been  times  when  the  light  of  the 
breaking  dawn  would  find  me  still  bending 
over  my  book.  Time  never  hung  heavy  on  my 
hands;  a  book  could  carry  me  at  once  away 
from  the  weary  and  cheerless  present  to  the 
magic  land  of  poetry  and  romance. 

Instead  of  scolding  myself  for  reading  so 
much  light  trash,  as  many  of  the  books  I  read 
at  that  time  might  be  called,  I  almost  envy 

37 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGEAPHY 

myself  the  deep  delight,  the  glory  of  those 
days,  when  a  book  could  dull  pain  and  sorrow, 
make  me  forget  my  own  narrow  surroundings, 
care  and  toil;  when  a  poem  could  carry  me 
into  the  land  of  romance  and  call  up  visions  of 

Beauty  making  beautiful  old  rime 

In  praise  of  ladies  dead  and  lively  knights; 

when  history  became  a  living  stage  on  which 
moved  before  me  the  heroes  of  the  past ;  when 
the  hours  would  fly  aw^ay  on  the  wings  of 
fancy,  and  my  soul  would  be  cradled  into  for- 
getfulness  of  all  the  weary  kingdom  of  time, 
by  that  soft  and  soothing  voice  which  is 
"lyrical  and  sweet  and  universal  as  the  rising 
of  the  wind,''  and  which,  like  the  thought  of 
God  himself,  could  "people  the  lonely  places 
and  efface  the  scars  of  my  mistakes  and  dis- 
appointments/' 

I  can  never  forget  the  impressions  made 
on  my  mind  in  those  early  days  when  reading, 
snatched  from  hours  of  toil,  carried  far  on 
into  the  midnight  and  early  morning  hours, 
had  all  the  charm  of  secret  love;  and  to  this 
day  there  are  certain  pictures  in  my  mind 
which  are  fairer  than  all  the  deeper  and 
broader  benefits  brought  by  later  years  of 
study  and  research,  pictures  "All  halo-girt 
with  fancies  of  my  own/'    There  is  that  won- 

38 


MY  EARLY  BOOK  LIFE 

derful  ode  of  Keats  to  a  Grecian  Urn,  with  its 
description  of  the  shepherd,  piping  forever 
his  unending  song ;  there  is  bonnie  Kilmeny  as 
she  went  up  the  glen,  and  fell  asleep  and 
was  carried  by  angels  to  the  heavenly  country ; 
there  is  the  scene  in  Pilgrim's  Progress  where 
Christian  and  Faithful  enter  the  pearly  gates 
of  the  heavenly  city;  there  is  the  picture  of 
Sir  Galahad  seeking  and  finding  the  Holy 
Grail;  and  Elaine,  lying  on  her  bed  in  the 
black  boat,  steered  by  the  dumb  old  servitor, 
so  sweet  and  fresh  and  lovely  that 
She  did  not  seem  as  dead. 
But  fast  asleep,  and  lay  as  though  she  smiled; 

and  finally,  there  is  that  scene,  taken  from 
some  unknown  book,  a  Sunday  school  book, 
whose  very  title  I  have  forgotten,  teaching 
some  religious  symbolism,  which  told  of  a 
group  of  young  men  going  to  a  far-off  country, 
which  could  be  reached  over  the  mountains, 
or  by  fighting  their  way  through  the  camp  of 
the  enemy  in  the  plains  below.  I  remember 
how  all  but  one  of  the  young  men  went  over 
the  mountains;  how  one  by  one  they  fell  and 
were  lost;  how  one  youth  put  on  his  armor 
and  fought  his  way  till  he  reached  the  heav- 
enly city ;  how  one  night,  before  the  final  con- 
flict^ he  lay  in  his  tent,  and  had  a  dream  of  a 

39 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

heavenly  messenger  sent  to  encourage  him  in 
the  morrow's  combat.  The  book,  I  suppose, 
was  simple,  and  probably  I  should  find  it 
crude  if  I  read  it  to-day;  but  to  my  youthful 
fancy  then  it  brought  all  the  charm  of  poetry 
and  romance  in  the  service  of  religious  teach- 
ing, and  the  impression  was  so  strong  and 
lasting,  that  years  afterward  when  I  visited 
the  National  Gallery  in  London  and  saw  the 
beautiful  painting  of  RaphaePs  Knight,  it 
seemed  as  if  the  picture  in  my  memory  had 
suddenly  taken  form  to  itself  before  me. 

Another  thing  I  remember  about  my  early 
reading  is  the  impulse  I  felt  to  learn  poetry 
by  heart.  One  of  the  chief  effects  such  men  as 
Shakespeare,  Tennyson,  Byron,  and  others 
had  upon  me  was  a  deep  delight  in  the  outer 
form  of  their  works — the  words,  lines,  pas- 
sages, which  contained  wise  and  subtle 
thoughts  and  beautiful  descriptions  enshrined 
in  musical  verse.  It  is  natural  to  remember 
the  words  of  those  whom  we  love,  and  the  last 
words  of  dying  friends,  the  counsel  given  by 
parents,  linger  in  the  ear  and  heart  with 
power  oftentimes  to  cheer  the  lonely  hours  of 
solitude,  strengthen  us  in  discouragement,  or 
fill  our  hearts  with  joy  and  peace.  Something 
of  the  same  subtle  power  exists  in  the  verse 

40 


MY  EAKLY  BOOK  LIFE 

of  the  poets  we  love.     As  Euripides  says  m 

his  Hippolytus, 

For  songs 
There  are  with  magic  virtues  fraught,  and  words 
Which  soothe  the  soul. 

Then,  again,  there  is  an  innate  love  for  a  fine 
phrase  in  us  all.  From  time  to  time  we  find 
thoughts  and  imaginations  that  are  old  and 
yet  ever  new,  clothed  in  language  which, 
somehow  or  other,  gives  to  them  the  gift  of 
immortality;  words  which  long  ago  were  ut- 
tered in  idle  or  in  thoughtful  mood,  in  glad- 
ness or  in  pain,  and  to-day  have  the  power  of 
giving  pleasure  and  uplift  of  spirit  to  those 
who  hear  them;  words  which  the  soul  of  the 
poet  detaches  and  sends  away  "a  fearless, 
sleepless,  deathless  progeny,  clad  with  wings 
which  carry  them  fast  and  far,  and  infix  them 
irrecoverably  into  the  hearts  of  men." 

I  count  it  as  one  of  the  blessings  of  my  life 
that,  in  these  early  days,  in  my  heart  too  were 
fixed  irrecoverably  many  quotations  of  all 
kinds.  It  was  altogether  unconsciously  done 
at  first,  just  as  a  young  man  rejoices  to  run  a 
race,  or  some  one  with  a  natural  fondness  for 
music  learns  the  popular  songs.  I  seemed  to 
receive  a  kind  of  physical  pleasure  in  repeat- 
ing lines  of  poetry,  in  the  mere  exercise  of  the 

41 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

vocal  cords  and  in  the  training  of  the  mem- 
ory. I  had  a  certain  satisfaction  in  feeling  the 
power  of  memory  increasing,  a  certain  sense 
of  confidence  in  the  conquering  of  the  natural 
difficulties  that  stood  in  the  way.  This  physi- 
cal pleasure  is  akin  to  that  which  those  who 
speak  a  foreign  language  experience,  after 
overcoming  the  awkAvardness  of  tongue  and 
lips  called  upon  to  perform  unwonted  tasks. 
There  was  also  an  intellectual  pleasure  in  the 
feeling  that  I  had  in  my  mind  and  at  my 
tongue's  end  some  of  the  best  and  noblest 
thoughts  that  have  been  written,  thoughts 
that  have  power  to  touch  the  imagination,  stir 
the  heart,  and  bring  up  to  memory  the  sub- 
stance of  great  books  read  in  the  past. 

I  have  already  mentioned  how  I  learned 
many  passages  of  Shakespeare  by  heart,  but 
he  was  only  one  among  many.  I  learned  the 
whole  of  Gray's  Elegy,  Longfellow's  sonnets 
on  Dante,  parts  of  Hiawatha,  lines  and 
short  poems  of  Tennyson,  Byron,  Brow^ning, 
Goethe,  Schiller,  Tasso,  Dante,  and  others, 
most  of  which  still  linger  in  my  memory. 

A  great  change  came  over  my  habits  of 

reading  when  I  went  to  college.     During  the 

early  years  of  my  life  I  had  been  drawn  along 

by  an  irresistible  impulse  toward  books,  I 

42 


MY  EARLY  BOOK  LIFE 

knew  not  why.  I  had  no  method  or  object. 
Nothing  was  further  from  my  thoughts  than 
a  college  education.  Not  that  I  did  not  want 
it,  but  I  could  not  see  the  way  to  it.  Finally, 
however,  my  friends  became  interested;  the 
pastor  of  my  church,  later  president  of  a  col- 
lege himself,  George  E.  Reed,  of  Dickinson 
College,  urged  me  to  make  a  determined  effort 
to  find  a  way.  My  brother,  now  gone,  with 
noble  unselfishness  undertook  the  burden  of 
managing  the  financial  side  of  the  venture, 
and  so,  almost  before  I  realized  it,  I  found 
myself  established  as  a  student  of  Wesleyan 
University. 

As  far  as  college  preparation  goes,  I  was 
self-made,  to  use  the  title  of  a  book  by  Samuel 
Smiles,  which  was  of  great  help  to  me  in  those 
days,  in  overcoming  off-recurring  attacks  of 
discouragement.  My  mathematics,  Greek, 
and  Latin  were  all  studied  without  a  teacher, 
in  the  intervals  of  work,  and  I  am  still  unable 
to  understand  how  I  ever  came  to  be  admitted, 
with  a  few  conditions  only,  into  a  college  that 
has  always  stood  for  high  standards  in  schol- 
arship. At  any  rate,  I  was  admitted,  and  a 
new  era  in  my  life  began. 

College  is  not  the  best  place  to  cultivate  a 
pure  love  for  reading.     There  are  so  many 

43 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

elements  mixed  in.  For  me  the  four  years  in 
college  were  largely  spent  in  the  rectification 
of  my  haphazard  preparation.  I  studied  all 
I  could  of  the  classics,  history,  English,  and 
modern  languages.  I  made  a  final  separation 
from  the  study  of  science,  although  to  this 
day  I  feel  a  keen  interest  in  the  results  of 
scientific  investigations,  the  processes  of 
which  are  too  technical  for  me  to  follow. 

Yet  I  do  not  think  I  enjoyed  the  pure  de- 
light of  reading  in  college  so  much  as  I  did 
before  going  there.  The  course  of  studies  I 
took  was  in  perfect  harmony  with  my  general 
taste.  It  was  the  old  classical  course  for  B.A., 
and  included  required  mathematics,  Greek 
and  Latin,  while  leaving  some  room  for  elec- 
tives  in  the  later  years  of  the  course.  These 
electives  on  my  part  were  largely  in  the  line 
of  languages,  history,  and  literature.  There 
was  in  college  at  that  time,  and  is  still,  a  sys- 
tem of  special  honors.  Impelled  by  the  ad- 
vantage of  having  regular  courses  of  reading 
laid  out  for  me  in  the  things  I  liked  most,  I 
applied  for  and  did  the  work  for  special 
honors  in  the  departments  of  Greek,  Latin, 
modem  languages,  English  literature,  and 
history.  My  reading  since  then  has  been  very 
largely  along  these  same  lines. 

44 


MY  EARLY  BOOK  LIFE 

Immediately  after  graduation  from  college 
I  went  abroad  to  pursue  my  studies  in  foreign 
universities.  The  first  of  these  I  visited  was 
the  University  of  Berlin,  where  I  spent  three 
semesters.  I  was  fortunate  here  in  being  able 
to  follow  the  courses  of  some  of  the  great  men 
in  German  and  Romance  philology.  Much 
of  tjie  lecture  work  seemed  to  me  perfunctory, 
consisting  largely  in  the  dry  recital  of  facts. 
I  remember  one  course  of  lectures  under  Pro- 
fessor Roediger  on  ^^Old  High  German  Gram- 
mar.'' Only  a  few  of  those  who  started  in 
persisted  to  the  end.  On  the  last  day  of  the 
course  Professor  Roediger  announced  the  ap- 
pearance of  Braune's  Althochdeutsche  Gram- 
matik,  which  he  warmly  praised.  I  at  once 
procured  the  book  and  found  the  same  facts 
that  I  had  been  laboriously  taking  down 
orally,  two  or  three  times  a  week  for  a  whole 
semester.  Professor  Roediger  was  far  more 
interesting  in  his  course  on  Walther  von  der 
Vogelweide.  Other  men  whom  I  heard  were 
Zupitza  in  Middle  High  German,  and  Tobler 
in  Provengal.  In  general  I  cannot  say  that 
I  found  the  lectures  in  Berlin  twenty-five 
years  ago  very  stimulating  or  interesting. 
Before  the  end  of  the  semester  the  number  of 
attendants  would  drop  down  almost  to  noth- 

45 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

ing.  The  bare  rooms,  the  cold,  dark  mornings 
of  winter,  the  monotonous  delivery  of  many  of 
the  lectures,  the  listless  attitude  of  the  stu- 
dents, all  was  far  from  inspiring  enthusiasm. 
That  other  students  felt  this  is  evident  from 
the  following  couplet  which  I  found  scratched 
on  a  desk  in  one  of  the  lecture  rooms,  where 
the  celebated  theologian  Dillmann  gave  his 
lectures : 

Wenn  schlafen  wm  man. 
So  hore  man  Dillmann. 

Two  men  were  especially  attractive  to  me 
at  that  time:  Dr.  Edward  Schwann,  whom  I 
heard  on  Old  French  Phonetik  and  the  Epopee 
Frangaise.  He  was  exceedingly  bright,  intel- 
ligent, and  interesting.  His  lectures  on  pho- 
netics formed  the  basis  of  the  Altfranzosische 
Grammatik,  which  is  the  chief  monument  to 
the  lamented  scholar,  who  died  a  premature 
death.  The  most  inspiring  of  all,  however, 
was  Professor  Wilhelm  Scherer,  whom  I 
heard  on  the  Nibelungenlied.  His  lectures 
were  a  genuine  treat  to  the  large  numbers  of 
studious  youth  who  crowded  his  lecture  room. 
As  it  was  said  of  Kenan,  I  believe,  we  came  to 
hear  a  lecture  and  il  nous  donnait  une  fete, 
I  remember  very  distinctly  the  last  lecture  I 
heard  from  Scherer  before  his  death.    He  must 

46 


MY  EARLY  BOOK  LIFE 

have  felt  then  the  presentiment  of  what  was 
so  soon  to  come.  He  was  much  quieter  than 
usual,  and  from  time  to  time  went  toward  the 
window  and  looked  out,  with  something  of 
sadness  in  his  face.  He  was  the  most  brilliant 
man  I  heard  in  Berlin,  and  one  whose  influ- 
ence has  lingered  with  me  most,    ,-xrtrv.  o-vi^-ij^is^ 

Outside  the  work  in  the  University,  my  stay 
in  Berlin  was  useful  in  the  development  of 
my  love  for  reading  in  various  ways.  I  read 
and  learned  to  love  the  German  poets,  espe- 
cially Goethe  and  Schiller.  I  strove  to  ac- 
quire a  clear  and  connected  view  of  the  history 
of  German  literature,  from  the  Hildebrands- 
lied  down  to  Emmanuel  Geibel  and  Victor 
von  Scheffel,  whose  Tromi>eter  von  Sackingen 
at  that  time  was  in  the  heyday  of  its  glory. 
The  visits  to  the  museums  and  art  galleries 
supplied  other  elements  in  the  general  out- 
look over  life  and  art  which  the  love  of  books 
already  had  begun  to  implant  in  my  mind. 

From  Berlin  I  went  to  Paris,  where  I  heard 
more  or  less  such  men  as  Darmstetter,  Gaston 
Paris,  Guizot,  Renan.  All  these  men  were 
interesting,  especially  Gaston  Paris,  whose 
profound  knowledge  of  Romance  philology, 
joined  to  a  true  French  talent  for  clear  and 
interesting  exposition,  made  him  the  foremost 

47 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

scholar  in  his  department  up  to  his  death  a 
few  years  ago.  One  of  the  interesting  events 
connected  with  my  stay  in  Paris  was  the  in- 
auguration of  Leconte  de  Lisle  into  the 
French  Academy.  He  was  elected  to  the  fau- 
teuil  of  Victor  Hugo,  and  at  his  reception, 
which  I  was  fortunate  enough  to  be  able  to 
attend,  Alexandre  Dumas  gave  the  address 
of  welcome.  Leconte  de  Lisle's  ow^n  elegant 
address  was,  according  to  the  custom,  a  eulogy 
on  the  genius,  so  different  from  his  own,  of 
Victor  Hugo.  Later  and  in  after  years  I  have 
heard  some  of  the  great  men  at  the  Universi- 
ties of  Geneva,  Lausanne,  Rome,  and  Florence. 
In  all  this  work  I  gradually  acquired  a  feeling 
for  and  spent  much  of  my  time  in  the  study  of 
so-called  German  scholarships,  as  exemplified 
in  the  field  of  modern  philology.  I  have  since 
then  pored  over  the  Grundrisse  of  Koerting, 
Grober,  and  Paul.  I  have  tried  to  penetrate 
myself  with  the  spirit  of  original  research. 
In  my  own  case  the  phase  of  this  research  that 
attracted  me  most  has  been  that  of  sources, 
parallels,  motifs,  etc.  The  mere  collation  of 
texts,  study  of  manuscripts,  or  investigation  of 
historical  grammar  and  syntax  has  not  ap- 
pealed to  me  so  much.  But  the  very  impulse 
that  I  had  early  acquired  toward  a  love  for 

48 


MY  EARLY  BOOK  LIFE 

quotations,  and  which  led  me  to  learn  them  by 
heart,  or  write  them  in  my  notebooks,  led  me 
very  materially  to  a  liking  for  sources.  It 
seemed  like  meeting  an  old  friend  to  come 
across  the  same  plot,  or  incident,  or  figure,  or 
even  verbal  expression  in  writers  of  different 
times  and  different  lands. 

I  am  well  aware  that  German  methods  of 
scholarship,  and  especially  their  importation 
into  America,  have  been  made  the  butt  of  ridi- 
cule and  contempt  by  many  critics.  This  is 
especially  true  of  the  field  of  German  and 
Romance  philology.  It  was  against  the  stu- 
dents of  mediaeval  literature  that  Brunetiere 
wrote  his  famous  article  in  the  Revue  des 
Deux  Mondes,  and  it  is  of  them  that  Lemaitre 
has  said  that  ^^ces  recherches  sont  le  refuge 
des  honnetes  gens^  a  qui  la  grande  ciiriosite, 
le  sentiment  du  heaUj  et  le  don  de  Vexpres- 
sion  ont  ete  refuses/^  And  yet  my  own  per- 
sonal experience  has  led  me  to  have  a  high 
opinion  of  the  value  of  such  studies,  especially 
for  young  men.  A  knowledge  of  the  linguistic 
and  other  phases  of  mediaeval  literature  is  of 
the  utmost  value  as  a  proper  background 
for  the  study  of  modern  literature.  Even  the 
investigation  of  the  dialect  of  some  mediaeval 
author,  the  comparison  of  the  language  and 

49 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

style,  may  develop  certain  habits  of  accuracy, 
industry,  patience  that  may  be  used  in  work 
of  a  more  apparent  usefulness  later.  And 
there  is  likewise  a  certain  charm  in  getting  a 
glimpse  at  first  hand  of  the  thoughts,  feelings, 
and  imaginations  of  the  Middle  Ages^  out  of 
which  have  come  all  modern  civilization.  And 
yet  while  all  this  is  true,  while  strict  philo- 
logical methods  applied  to  some  unknown 
writer  of  the  Middle  Ages  may  develop  valu- 
able habits  of  study,  yet,  if  they  always  re- 
main restricted  to  such  subjects,  they  are 
likely  to  leave  a  man  narrow,  uninspiring, 
and  with  a  false  perspective  of  literature  and 
learning. 

I  have  come  to  feel,  however,  that  this 
method  may  be  applied  to  larger  themes,  to 
the  great  poets  and  writers  themselves,  to  the 
investigation  of  the  chances  and  changes  of 
the  great  subjects  of  nature,  love,  and  death, 
and  the  elemental  passions  that  make  up  the 
subject-matter  of  all  great  literature,  that, 
with  Hegel,  it  can  help  us  to  see  how  the 
eternal  idea  of  the  Beautiful  has  haunted  the 
human  race;  that  it  can  help  us  to  penetrate 
into  the  local,  temporal,  and  soul-condition  in 
which  any  work  of  literature  was  produced, 
and  regard  all  literature  as  "the  expression 

50 


MY  EARLY  BOOK  LIFE 

of  living  national  forces,  the  reflex  of  the  whole 
of  the  national  civilization";  that,  with 
Eucken,  it  can  teach  us  to  "trace  the  way  in 
which  the  great  writers  have  systematically 
developed  themselves  and  entered  as  living 
forces  into  the  culture  of  the  thinker  of  his 
own  age  and  of  the  ages  that  follow  it" ;  above 
all,  that  it  may  teach  us,  with  Herder,  "to 
penetrate  ourselves  with  the  most  character- 
istic, deepest,  and  noblest  life  of  all  nations, 
to  open  lovingly  our  own  inner  life  to  the  for- 
eign elements,  to  seize  them  and  take  them 
up  in  our  own  blood  and  life."  And  if  phi- 
lology can  teach  us  this,  it  surely  has  a  place 
in  the  scheme  of  higher  literary  study. 


51 


INTELLECTUAL  IDEALS 


%3 


Give  a  man  this  taste,  and  the  means  of  gratifying 
it,  and  you  can  hardly  fail  of  making  a  happy  man. 
You  place  him  in  contact  with  the  best  society  in  every 
period  of  history,  with  the  wisest,  the  wittiest,  with  the 
tenderest,  the  bravest,  and  the  purest  characters  who 
have  adorned  humanity.  You  make  him  a  denizen  of 
all  nations,  a  contemporary  of  all  ages.  The  world  has 
been  created  for  him. — Sir  John  Herschel. 


54 


CHAPTER  III 

Intellectual  Ideals 

As  I  look  back  over  the  various  kinds  of 
books  I  have  read,  and  try  to  analyze  the  pur- 
pose that  led  me  to  read  them,  and  especially 
their  effect  upon  my  mind,  I  come  to  see 
clearly  that  my  reading,  as  a  whole,  can  be 
divided  into  three  general  classes:  first, 
that  reading  which  has  been  done  without 
any  thought  of  benefit,  but  simply  as  a  mat- 
ter of  pure  enjoyment;  secondly,  that  which 
has  been  undertaken  mainly  with  the  scholar's 
ideal  of  seeing  and  understanding  the  truth 
as  it  manifests  itself  in  literature,  history,  and 
civilization;  thirdly,  reading  for  the  purpose 
of  getting  deeper  lessons  of  life,  moral  and 
spiritual  uplift,  light  amid  the  darkness  of 
this  painful  kingdom  of  time,  and  peradven- 
ture  that  peace  of  the  soul  that  comes  from 
communion  with  those  great  minds  who  have 
themselves  caught  a  glimpse  of  the  eternal, 
and  have  taught  others  to  see  the  same.  These 
three  general   divisions  of  reading  may   be 

55 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

called  the  sesthetic,  the  intellectual,  and  the 
spiritual.  The  first  I  felt  chiefly  in  youth, 
the  third  more  deeply  in  these  later  years. 
The  second,  or  more  intellectual  form  of  read- 
ing, coincided  largely  with  my  years  of  study 
and  preparation. 

In  my  early  days  I  read  a  book,  for  the  most 
part,  without  any  thought  of  what  it  might 
bring  me.  I  read  it  simply  because  it  was  a 
book,  and  I  was  fond  of  reading.  I  did  not  care 
much  who  the  author  was,  or  when  he  wrote, 
or  what  manner  of  man  he  was.  If  the  book 
itself  gave  pleasure,  that  was  enough  for  me. 
In  my  student  days,  however,  in  college,  and 
especially  in  the  University,  I  was  not  long  in 
seeing  that  this,  in  itself,  w^as  not  the  scholar's 
ideal.  I  came  to  see  that  to  understand  a 
book  of  importance  I  must  not  only  know  the 
contents  thereof,  but  likewise  the  man  who 
wrote  it;  where  and  when  he  lived  and  died; 
what  his  family  and  racial  heredity  was,  and 
how  it  molded  his  mind  and  character; 
whence  he  drew  the  sources  of  his  book,  and 
what  influence  he  himself  exerted  on  others  of 
his  own  and  after  times.  And  I  further  came 
to  see  that  what  was  true  of  one  man  was  true 
of  a  whole  group  of  literature  of  any  time  or 
nation ;  that  I  must  not  only  know  the  names 

56 


INTELLECTUAL  IDEALS 

of  books  and  authors,  but  also  what  were  the 
characteristic  features  of  the  period  as  a 
whole,  what  influences  of  other  lands  and 
other  times  affected  the  period  in  question, 
and  how  it  affected  other  lands  and  later 
times. 

And  thus  I  came  to  see  that  literature  in 
general  was  not  a  mere  agglomeration  of 
books,  written  by  chance  and  without  any 
interrelation,  the  flotsam  and  jetsam  of  thq 
stream  of  time,  but  an  ever-deepening  and 
widening  stream  itself,  flowing  down  the 
centuries;  and  that  it  was  my  duty  as  a 
teacher,  my  pleasure  as  an  individual,  to  trace 
the  course  of  this  stream  of  literature,  striv- 
ing to  understand  the  various  influences  that 
broaden  and  deepen  it,  and  change  its  direc- 
tion from  time  to  time. 

This  method,  which  I  have  alluded  to  above, 
is  the  direct  result  of  the  scientific  theory  of 
evolution,  which  was  to  the  nineteenth  century 
what  the  law  of  gravitation  was  to  the  days  of 
Sir  Isaac  Newton ;  a  theory  which,  beginning 
with  Lamarck,  brought  to  completion  in  bi- 
ology by  Darwin,  was  applied  to  all  depart- 
ments of  knowledge  by  Herbert  Spencer. 
This  constant  process  of  change,  which  goes 
on  in  the  formation  of  the  amoeba  as  well  as 

57 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

in  the  construction  of  a  solar  system,  has  been 
applied  to  history  by  Hegel  and  in  our  own 
time  by  Eucken;  and,  last  of  all,  has  been 
applied  to  literature  itself  by  Brunetiere,  who, 
under  the  influence  of  Darwin,  has  endeavored 
to  apply  the  same  principles  of  growth  and 
development  to  the  field  of  literature  as  the 
scientists  now  apply  to  all  fields  of  biology. 

For  some  reason  or  other  the  application  of 
this  principle  to  literature  long  ago  appealed 
to  me,  and  increased  greatly  the  pleasure  of 
reading.  I  felt  that  I  could  enjoy  a  book  in 
itself,  and  at  the  same  time  have  a  larger  feel- 
ing of  pleasure  in  the  thought  that  the  book, 
if  a  worthy  one,  was  adding  its  own  contribu- 
tion to  the  field  of  knowledge  of  which  it 
formed  a  part.  And  so  I  came  to  see  that 
the  history  of  all  literature  was  made  up  of 
the  constant  interplay  of  a  multitude  of  influ- 
ences, which  were  themselves  but  the  expres- 
sion of  the  inner  and  outer  life  of  all  times 
and  all  nations.  Sometimes  this  influence 
shows  itself  in  a  single  book,  and  who  can 
overestimate  such  an  influence  in  the  case  of 
Homer  and  Vergil,  or  even  of  such  books  as 
Boethius's  Consolation  of  Philosophy,  or  the 
Amadis  de  Gaula,  which,  in  the  French  trans- 
lation of  Herbart  des  Essarts,  was  practically 

58 


INTELLECTUAL  IDEALS 

the  origin  of  the  modern  novel?  Again  this 
influence  shows  itself  not  so  much  in  one 
single  book,  but,  rather,  in  the  whole  life  and 
character  of  an  author.  And  here,  again, 
who  can  overestimate  the  influence  of  such  a 
man  as  Petrarch  in  the  early  Renaissance, 
or  of  Voltaire  in  the  eighteenth  century? 
And,  broadening  our  theme,  we  find  the  same 
thing  true  not  only  of  individual  books  and 
authors,  but  of  whole  periods  of  literature. 
This  influence  may  be  local  or  general,  may 
last  for  a  short  time  or  be  permanent,  appar- 
ently dying  out,  yet  reappearing  again  like 
some  subterranean  river,  issuing  from  the 
ground  and  flowing  once  more  through  green 
fields  and  beside  the  habitations  of  men. 
Again,  this  infiuence  may  be  harmful,  as  in 
the  case  of  the  Alexandrian  school,  in  ancient 
times,  or  the  widespread  movement  known  as 
Euphuism,  Preciosity,  or  Marinism  in  the 
seventeenth  century.  Or  it  may  be  partly 
harmful  and  partly  wholesome,  as  in  the  case 
of  modem  Romanticism,  which,  with  all  its 
extravagances  and  lack  of  moderation,  has 
quickened  and  vivified  not  only  literature,  but 
all  forms  of  modern  art.  Such  is  the  broader 
intellectual  view  of  reading  that  gradually 
grew  up  in  my  mind,  and  which  has  not  only 

59 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

increased  the  pleasure  of  reading,  but  the 
benefits  thereof  as  well. 

If  there  is  one  thing  that  has  struck  me 
more  than  anything  else  in  my  reading  life, 
it  is  the  immortal  youth  and  the  never-fail- 
ing influence  of  the  great  writers  of  Greece 
and  Rome.  It  was  the  ever-deepening  convic- 
tion of  the  influence  of  the  classic  writers 
down  to  the  present,  their  power  to  inspire 
new  life  in  others,  that  led  me  to  begin  a  sys- 
tematic study  of  the  essential  elements  of  both 
Greek  and  Latin  literature,  and  to  trace  their 
influence  down  through  the  Dark  Ages,  where 
it  existed  largely  in  subterranean  form,  to  the 
Renaissance,  when  a  wild  enthusiasm  took 
possession  of  the  Western  world,  and  recre- 
ated European  literature,  adding  new  impetus 
to  the  Teutonic  and  Christian  elements,  which 
united  with  the  Grseco-Roman  element  to 
form  the  basis  of  modern  literature  as  well  as 
civilization. 

It  was  while  striving  to  solve  the  strange 
phenomenon  of  that  sudden  outburst  of  new 
life  and  thought  known  as  the  Renaissance, 
and  especially  the  sudden  resuscitation  of  an- 
cient literature  and  art  known  as  the  "Revival 
of  Learning,'^  that  I  was  led  to  make  a  system- 
atic study  of  the  main  features  of  that  strange 

60 


INTELLECTUAL  IDEALS 

period  of  history  known  as  the  Dark  Ages. 
At  first  it  seemed  to  me  an  inexplicable  con- 
fusion, a  chaos  in  which  no  order  could  be 
found.  But  as  I  folloiwed  the  various  steps 
of  the  gradual  decadence  of  classic  Latin  lit- 
erature, and  traced  the  change  to  the  ruder 
form  known  as  mediaeval  Latin,  the  reading 
of  the  crude  monuments  of  this  little-known 
form  of  literature  threw  light  on  the  inner  life 
of  the  people  from  the  downfall  of  Rome  to  the 
first  dawn  of  the  Renaissance.  And  gradu- 
ally a  picture  was  formed  in  my  mind  of  the 
Dark  Ages,  as  necessary  to  a  complete  view 
of  literature  and  history  as  the  more  bril- 
liant periods  that  preceded  and  followed  them. 
I  saw  the  coming  together  of  a  number  of 
powerful  and  yet  incompatible  forces — the 
Roman  empire,  mighty  still,  even  in  its  de- 
cline, the  incursion  of  the  Northern  Bar- 
barians, the  introduction  of  Christianity,  with 
its  doctrine  of  the  Fatherhood  of  God,  the 
brotherhood  of  man,  and  the  infinite  value 
and  the  immortality  of  the  human  soul.  I 
saw  then  that  the  Dark  Ages  was  the  caldron 
in  which  these  disparate  elements  must  adjust 
themselves  until  they  formed  the  very  ele- 
ments of  all  modern  civilization.     I  saw  how 

this  confusion  produced  terrible  and  world- 

61 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

shaking  events,  bloodshed,  rapine,  the  un- 
chaining of  all  the  brute  forces  of  humanity. 
And  I  found  a  glimpse  of  all  this  in  the  early 
monuments  of  mediseval  Latin  literature,  in 
which  the  crudeness,  superstition,  lack  of  re- 
finement and  ignorance  of  art  which  mark  the 
Dark  Ages  are  reflected  in  chronicles,  legends, 
scholastic  discussions,  lives  of  the  saints, 
fabulous  zoologies,  and  poetic  paraphrases 
of  biblical  history.  And  so,  the  clear  appre- 
hension of  the  great  principle  of  evolution 
applied  to  literature  became  a  lantern  which 
I  could  turn,  to  use  Emerson's  figure,  on  the 
multitude  of  apparently  unconnected  facts 
that  made  up  the  history  of  the  early  Chris- 
tian centuries,  and  ^^behold  all  the  mats  and 
rubbish  that  had  littered  the  garret  became 
precious,"  and  the  apparently  incomprehen- 
sible and  unattractive  Dark  Ages,  acquired 
new  meaning  and  new  interest  for  me. 

But  this  method  of  reading  in  my  case  be- 
came most  fruitful  when  applied  to  the  study 
of  modern  literature.  Early  in  life  I  had 
tried  to  read  most  of  the  English  writers,  to 
get  a  general  view  of  the  history  of  the  litera- 
ture, chiefly,  however,  from  tl;e  standpoint 
of  dates  and  names,  without  penetrating  into 
the  spiritual  element  that  bound   them   to- 

62 


INTELLECTUAL  IDEALS 

gether.  Later  I  had  tried  to  get  the  same 
somewhat  external  view  of  the  history  of 
German  and  Italian  literature.  It  was  not, 
however,  until  a  clear  conception  of  the  over- 
whelming influence  of  French  literature — its 
hegemony,  we  may  very  well  call  it^ — came 
to  me  that  I  received  at  last  a  satisfactory, 
connected  view  of  the  oneness  of  all  modern 
European  literature  and  its  close  connection 
with  its  own  indigenous  past,  as  well  as  with 
the  literature  of  ancient  Greece  and  Rome. 
More  and  more  as  the  years  have  gone  by  have 
I  been  impressed  with  a  deeper  and  deeper  feel- 
ing of  the  extraordinary  role  played  by  France 
in  the  development  of  modern  literature.  The 
longer  I  have  read  and  studied,  the  deeper 
this  impression  has  become.  And  I  have  come 
to  see  that,  just  as  in  the  kindred  field  of 
history,  according  to  Duruy,  nothing  of  im- 
portance, no  great  social  or  political  experi- 
ence, has  been  attempted  without  first  having 
been  accomplished  by  France,  so  in  European 
literature  practically  every  great  movement 
has  had  its  start  and  development  in  that 
country. 

As  this  thought  grew  clear  in  my  mind, 
my  study  of  French  became  invested  with  a 
double  charm.    It  was  no  longer  the  thrilling 

63 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

interest  of  her  noyelists  that  I  sought  for  now, 
no  longer  the  wonderful  charm  of  her  prose 
writers,  or  the  classic  form  of  her  poets  and 
dramatists,  but  the  inspiring  vision  of  the 
great  stream  of  European  literature,  with  all 
its  changes  in  direction  and  breadth  down  to 
the  present.  It  was  here  that  the  study  of 
Old  French  took  on  a  peculiar  pleasure.  It 
became  a  delight  to  me  to  see  how,  in  the  older 
period  of  the  Middle  Ages,  the  Chansons  de 
Gestes  and  the  Arthurian  romances  furnished 
the  material  of  a  large  part  of  the  literature 
of  Germany,  England,  and  Italy;  to  trace 
the  influence  of  Chretien  de  Troyes  in  the 
Parsifal  of  Wolfram  von  Eschenbach  and, 
later,  of  Wagner;  to  see  how  Sir  Thomas 
Malory's  translation  of  the  French  prose 
version  of  the  Morte  d'Arthur  furnished  the 
sources  of  Tennyson's  Idyls  of  the  King; 
how  the  Franco-Italian  versions  of  the  Old 
French  romances  were  worked  over  into  poetry 
by  Pulci  and  Boiardo,  and  found  at  last  their 
highest  literary  development  in  the  fasci- 
nating stanzas  of  Ariosto's  Orlando  Furioso, 
in  which  the  elements  of  the  mediaeval  epic 
and  the  newly  discovered  treasures  of  clas- 
sical learning  were  fused  into  one  harmonious 

whole. 

64 


INTELLECTUAL  IDEALS 

It  was  with  an  interest  still  deeper  that  I 
came  to  see  how  universal  was  the  influence 
of  southern  France  in  the  development  of  the 
lyrical  poetry  of  modern  Europe.  Added  to 
the  aesthetic  pleasure  of  reading  the  poetry  of 
the  Troubadours  themselves,  was  the  intellec- 
tual pleasure  that  came  to  me  as  I  strove  to 
trace  their  influence  on  the  Trouveres  of 
Northern  France,  the  Minnesingers  of  Ger- 
many— Walther  von  der  Vogelweide  and  the 
rest — and  especially  on  the  early  Sicilian 
poets  of  the  court  of  Frederick  II,  where  the 
poetry  of  Provence  began  the  glorious  history 
of  Italian  literature.  For  though,  at  first, 
this  Sicilian  poetry  was  only  a  slavish  imita- 
tion of  the  conventional  commonplaces  of 
spring  and  love  that  characterized  the  Pro- 
vencal poets,  yet,  spreading  to  Bologna,  it 
received  a  philosophical  content  from  Guido 
Guinicelli ;  and  thence,  spreading  to  Tuscany, 
was  changed  into  the  dolce  stil  nuovo  of  Dante, 
with  whom  the  worn-out  symbols  of  the  Trou- 
badours became  inspired  with  genuine  life, 
and  love  became  the  inspiration  to  the  noblest 
religious  aspiration;  until,  taking  new  form 
in  the  songs  and  sonnets  of  Petrarch,  the 
poetry  of  the  Troubadours  was  transmitted  to 
every  part  of  Europe,  even  down  to  the  present 

65 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

day,  when  its  influence  can  be  traced  in  every 
song  that  sings  of  love  and  the  charms  of 
spring. 

And  what  is  true  of  the  Old  French  litera- 
ture, I  found  to  be  also  true  of  the  classic 
French  literature  of  the  seventeenth  century. 
For  though  the  center  of  gravity  of  literary 
influence  in  Europe  shifted  during  the  Renais- 
sance from  France  to  Italy,  yet  it  soon  settled 
back  again  in  the  latter  country,  where  the 
classic  form,  elegant  language,  moderation, 
and  sense  of  proportion  which  characterize 
the  work  of  Racine,  Boileau,  and  La  Fontaine 
for  two  hundred  years  were  regarded  as  the 
ne  plus  ultra  of  literary  art,  not  only  in 
France,  but  in  Germany,  England,  and  Italy. 

I  have  dwelt  somewhat  long  on  this  sub- 
ject of  what  I  may  call  the  hegemony  of 
France  in  the  literature  of  western  Europe, 
because  it  was  the  evergrowing  conviction  of 
its  importance  that  led  me  to  a  clearer  con- 
ception of  the  oneness  of  modern  literature, 
a  conception  which,  as  Matthew  Arnold  says, 
is  absolutely  necessary  before  any  just  or 
valuable  criticism  can  be  made. 

While  this  development  of  a  new  ideal  in 
my  reading  of  literature  in  generaLwas  taking 
place,  another  closely  related  conviction  also 

66 


INTELLECTUAL  IDEALS 

took  hold  of  my  mind,  and  that  is  the  close 
connection  that  exists  between  literature  and 
history.  I  soon  came  to  see  that  without  a 
knofwledge  of  the  expansion  and  greatness  of 
Eome  I  could  have  no  true  understanding  of 
Vergil,  whose  poetry  sums  up  the  ideals  of 
the  empire  in  all  its  forms;  that  without  a 
knowledge  of  the  Middle  Ages  and  the  Ken- 
aissance  I  could  not  know  Dante,  on  the  one 
hand,  or  Petrarch,  Montaigne,  and  Shake- 
speare, on  the  other ;  that  a  knowledge  of  Puri- 
tanism alone  could  enable  me  to  understand 
Milton ;  and  the  agonies  of  doubt  and  despair 
shown  in  the  works  of  Tennyson  and  Matthew 
Arnold  could  be  explained  only  by  some 
knowledge  of  the  effect  upon  the  mind  of  men 
made  by  the  extraordinary  expansion  of 
science  in  the  nineteenth  century.  This 
thought  added  neiw  zest  and  pleasure  to  the 
reading  of  history,  which  from  my  boyhood 
years  had  been  a  favorite  one  for  me.  Some 
of  the  earliest  books  I  remember  to  have  read 
are  the  historical  series  by  Jacob  Abbott, 
which  made  a  lasting  impression  on  my  child- 
ish mind.  Since  then  I  have  read  with  deep  in- 
terest the  works  of  Green,  Macaulay,  and  Fiske 
on  English  and  American  history;  Motley  on 
Dutch  history;  Robertson,  Prescott,  on  Span- 

67 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

ish,  Mtiller,  Von  Ranke,  on  German,  and 
Guizot,  Michelet,  and  Duruy  on  French  his- 
tory. Most  of  these  books  were  read  at  first 
as  individuals,  without  much  plan  or  thought 
of  grouping  the  facts  together.  They  were 
fraught  with  deep  pleasure,  but  a  still  deeper 
pleasure  became  mine  when  I  began  to  read 
with  the  definite  purpose  of  getting  a  con- 
nected view  of  the  development  of  history  from 
ancient  Greece  down  to  the  present.  Herodo- 
tus and  Thucydides  and  Livy  were  read  in 
college  or  in  preparation  for  the  same ;  but  my 
chief  knowledge  of  Greek  history  wa^  obtained 
from  Grote  and  Thirl  wall;  and  the  same  is 
true,  for  Roman  history,  of  Mommsen,  Nie- 
buhr,  and  especially  Gibbon.  As  a  boy  I  read 
Milman's  History  of  Latin  Christianity,  and 
thus  got  my  first  glimpse  of  the  fascinating, 
though  complicated,  field  of  mediaeval  history. 
I  have  tried  since  then,  by  reading  the  chief 
authorities,  to  get  a  clear  and  satisfactory  view 
of  this  tangled  subject.  Gibbon's  Decline  and 
Fall  of  the  Roman  Empire  gave  me  not  only 
pleasure  and  admiration  for  its  style  and  mar- 
velously  clear  arrangement  of  the  immense 
mass  of  facts,  but  also  gave  me  a  more  or  less 
clear  knowledge  of  the  movements  that  at- 
tended the  downfall  of  Rome  and  laid  the 

68 


INTELLECTUAL  IDEALS 

foundation  of  a  new  series  of  nations  in 
Europe.  The  rise  of  the  modern  nations  be- 
came especially  clear  to  me  after  reading  the 
monumental  work  of  Dahn,  Die  Geschichte 
der  Komanischen  und  Germanischen  Volker, 
in  which  I  saw  the  various  branches  of  the 
Teutonic  race  grouping  themselves  together, 
forming  larger  and  larger  groups  till  they  be- 
came veritable  nations,  and,  pushed  onward 
by  other  hordes  of  people  from  the  North,  over- 
flowing the  fertile  fields  of  the  Southland,  the 
Franks  mingling  with  the  Romanized  Gauls 
and  forming  the  French  nation,  the  Burgun- 
dians  in  similar  manner  forming  French 
Switzerland,  the  Suevi  and  Visigoths  settling 
in  Spain,  the  Lombards  in  North  Italy,  while 
the  Angles  and  Saxons  formed  the  English 
nation,  the  Saxons,  Bavarians,  Rhine  Franks, 
and  Alemanni  formed  the  various  ethnical  ele- 
ments of  Germany  and  German  Switzerland. 

Equal  in  interest  to  this  forming  of  the 
nations  has  been  for  me  the  history  of  the 
Renaissance.  Here,  again,  I  was  attracted 
by  the  charm  of  brilliant  writing  before  the 
definite  purpose  was  excited  in  me  to  work 
out  for  myself  a  complete  understanding  of 
the  period.  J.  Addington  Symonds's  books 
on  the  Renaissance  opened  up  to  me  the  charm 

69 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGEAPHY 

of  this  period.  Then  came  the  fundamental 
work  of  Burckhardt;  and  later  the  vivid  pic- 
ture of  the  various  phases  of  life  in  Italy  of 
the  Renaissance  given  by  Monnier  in  his  vol- 
ume entitled  Le  Quattrocento.  Other  books 
that  helped  me  in  this  were  the  solid  German 
works  of  Geiger  and  Voigt.  But  it  was  espe- 
cially the  study  of  the  life  and  works  of  Pe- 
trarch which  showed  me  what  an  all-impor- 
tant role  was  played  by  the  Renaissance  in 
modern  civilization.  It  was  while  tracing  out 
the  various  elements  of  the  movement  found 
in  Petrarch,  and  later  developed  by  humanist, 
poet,  scholar,  artist,  of  the  following  centuries, 
that  the  conviction  of  the  oneness  of  the 
stream  of  human  civilization  dawned  upon 
me;  and  I  caught  a  glimpse  of  this  great 
stream  rising  in  Greece,  modified  in  Alex- 
andria, perfected  in  Rome,  sinking  to  a  sub- 
terranean stream  during  the  Dark  Ages,  to 
rise  again,  clear  and  sparkling  in  the  sunlight 
of  the  Renaissance,  and  flowing  down  to  our 
days  in  an  ever-broadening  river.  Above  all, 
I  caught  from  Herder  "and  Hegel  the  inspiring 
thought  of  hisstory,  not  merely  as  a  series  of 
meaningless  events,  of  the  rise  and  fall  of 
states  and  kings,  of  bloody  battles,  conquest 
and  ruins,  but  the  gradual  development  in 

70 


INTELLECTUAL  IDEALS 

the  collective  mind  of  mankind  of  the  sense 
of  freedom,  manifesting  itself  at  first  in  the 
realm  of  politics  and  then  in  religious  life, 
then  in  social  life,  and,  finally,  in  the  spiritual 
world,  all  tending  toward  that  far-off  event 
"To  which  the  whole  creation  moves.'' 

It  is  not  the  place  here  to  speak  of  the  books 
I  have  read  on  the  history  of  individual  na- 
tions. A  word  or  two  may  be  said  of  the  way 
in  which  I  was  led  to  study,  in  general  outline, 
church  history.  Here  too  I  began  early,  and 
I  found  in  Mosheim's  Ecclesiastical  History 
my  first  glimpse  of  this  fascinating  subject. 
Later  studies  in  literature,  -especially  Dante, 
led  to  the  desire  on  my  part  to  understand 
something  of  the  history  of  the  mediaeval 
church,  while  the  study  of  the  Renaissance 
led  to  that  of  the  Reformation,  which  is  the 
form  the  movement  took  when  it  crossed  the 
mountains  and  went  to  Germany,  where, 
changed  by  the  nature  of  the  Teutonic  spirit, 
and  by  the  application  of  critical  scholarship 
to  the  original  tongues  of  the  Bible,  it  brought 
about  a  new  birth  of  religion.  Here,  of  course, 
the  standard  book  is  D'Aubigne,  but  I  was  soon 
led  by  other  studies  to  go  more  into  detail  in 
the  origin  of  the  Reformation.  I  was  inter- 
ested in  the  early  settlement  of  Pennsylvania, 

71 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

and  was  preparing  to  write  the  book  after- 
ward published  under  the  title  of  the  German 
and  Swiss  Settlements  of  Colonial  Pennsyl- 
vania. This  led  me  to  the  study  of  the  reli- 
gious condition  in  Germany  and  Switzerland, 
and  especially  the  Thirty  Years'  War.  In 
Freytag's  Bilder  aus  der  Deutschen  Vergan- 
genheit  I  found  many  valuable  glimpses  into 
the  life  of  the  people.  Special  studies  on  the 
origin  of  the  Waldensians  and  Anabaptists 
completed  this  view,  while  the  invitation  from 
The  Methodist  Book  Concern  to  write  a  life 
of  John  Huss,  and  the  necessary  reading  there- 
for, opened  up  a  clear  view  of  the  preliminary 
movements  which  led  to  Luther's  Eeformation. 
Of  a  different  origin  was  the  development  of 
my  view  of  the  spiritual  development  of  reli- 
gion in  modern  times.  The  study  of  Dante, 
visits  to  Assisi,  and  the  pictures  of  Giotto  had 
led  me  to  the  writing  of  a  short  life  of  Saint 
Francis.  It  was  in  studying  his  life,  and 
the  various  fortunes  of  his  order,  especially 
in  Germany,  that  I  came  to  know  and  love 
Tauler,  Suso,  and  the  Theologia  Germanica, 
which  had  such  a  mighty  influence  on  Luther's 
inner  life.  The  natural  desire  to  know 
something  of  the  history  and  origin  of  the 
Methodist  Church  led  to  a  general  view  of 

72 


INTELLECTUAL  IDEALS 

the  early  Moravians,  the  Pietists  of  Germany, 
Wesley's  acquaintance  with  Spangenberg  and 
Boehler,  his  visit  to  Herrnhut,  and  his  found- 
ing of  emotional  religion  in  the  bosom  of  the 
English  Church,  with  its  branch  in  Ireland, 
its  transplantation  to  the  United  States  by 
Barbara  Heck  and  Philip  Embury,  and  its 
influence  in  founding  the  United  Brethren  and 
Evangelical  Alliance  denominations. 

This,  then,  is  a  brief  sketch  of  the  bird's- 
eye  view  over  historj^  which  my  reading  has 
given  me,  and  which  it  is  a  constant  pleasure 
for  me  to  dwell  on  from  time  to  time.  A  dif- 
ferent general  view  over  the  centuries  is  one 
that  came  to  me  later  than  the  above.  Of 
course  I  had  some  knowledge  of  philosophy 
in  general,  but  it  w^as  but  fragmentary  and 
without  any  connection.  I  think  it  was  my 
interest  in  Dante  that  first  led  me  to  endeavor 
to  get  a  satisfactory  view  of  the  development 
of  philosophy  from  the  beginning  down  to  the 
present.  The  Divina  Commedia  is  so  com- 
pletely soaked  in  Scholasticism  that  no  one 
can  hope  to  understand  it  without  some  knowl- 
edge of  that  strange  system  of  thought.  It 
was  in  consequence  of  these  studies  that  the 
desire  arose  to  obtain  a  satisfactory  view  of 
philosophy  as  a  whole,  and  from  time  to  time 

73 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

I  read  various  manuals  on  that  subject,  but 
especially  for  ancient  philosophy,  the  fasci- 
nating volumes  of  Zeller.  This,  in  connection 
with  the  parallel  reading  of  Plato,  Plotinus, 
Aristotle,  and  Cicero,  gave  me  the  necessary 
basis  on  which  to  build  the  knowledge  of 
mediaeval  and  modern  philosophy.  The  works 
of  such  a  man  as  Saint  Augustine,  an  Epitome 
of  Saint  Thomas  Aquinas,  and  general  or  par- 
ticular histories  of  philosophy  and  dogma, 
especially  Harnack,  led  me  to  a  view  of  the 
strange  development  of  philosophy  in  the 
Middle  Ages  mentioned  above,  in  the  form  of 
Scholasticism,  its  marvelous  influence  for  the 
ne:xt  half  dozen  centuries,  the  supremacy  of 
Aristotle  and  the  efforts  of  the  schoolmen  to 
harmonize  his  philosophy  with  the  dogmas  of 
the  church,  the  unending  discussions  between 
Nominalists  and  Realists,  the  contest  between 
Saint  Bernard  and  Abelard,  the  gradual  rise 
of  the  modern  spirit,  Bacon,  Bruno,  Campa- 
nella,  the  fall  of  Scholasticism,  the  birth  of 
modern  philosophy  in  Descartes's  cogito  ergo 
sum^  the  enlightenment  philosophy  in  France, 
the  sensation  philosophy  in  England,  modern 
idealism  as  seen  in  Kant,  Hegel,  Fichte,  Schel- 
ling,  and  finally,  out  of  all  these  elements,  the 
contemporary   systems   of   Herbert   Spencer, 

74 


INTELLECTUAL  IDEALS 

Fechner,  Bergson,  Eucken,  and  the  pragmatic 
philosophy  of  William  James.  Perhaps  all 
this  sounds  a  little  larger  than  it  actually 
is.  I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  I  have  made  a 
careful  and  thorough  study  of  all  these  sys- 
tems of  philosophy,  or  that  I  could  pass  an 
examination  off  hand  on  Thomas  Aquinas, 
Descartes,  or  Kant.  But  I  have  tried  to  get 
a  general  conspectus  of  the  development  of 
philosophy  from  ancient  times  down  to  the 
present,  and  however  superficial  this  may  seem 
to  specialists,  to  me  it  is  a  precious  possession 
forever. 

It  was  while  I  was  endeavoring  to  get  the 
above  general  conception  of  the  development 
of  history,  literature,  and  philosophy  that  I 
became  more  and  more  aware  of  another  inner, 
spiritual  life,  flowing  down  the  centuries  in 
the  universal  heart  of  mankind.  For  humanity 
as  a  whole,  as  well  as  the  individual  man,  has 
an  inner  as  well  as  an  outer  life;  and  to  me 
this  inner  life,  as  revealed  in  the  various  forms 
of  literature,  is  far  more  interesting  than  the 
merely  outward  form  of  nature  and  humanity, 
as  seen  in  the  annals  of  science  and  history, 
which  I  have  tried  to  describe  above.  And  as 
I  reflect  over  the  various  phases  of  this  inner 
life,  the  chances  and  changes  of  the  human 

75 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

heart,  the  different  way  in  which  men  have 
viewed  the  great  spectacle  of  life  and  nature 
about  them,  I  seem  to  see  man  in  the  early 
times,  with  emotions  and  aspirations  rude  and 
undeveloped ;  then  I  see  the  gradual  expansion 
of  his  soul,  the  refining  of  his  passions,  the  en- 
largement of  his  spiritual  life,  the  growth  of 
a  feeling  of  brotherhood,  of  sympathy  for  the 
poor  and  suffering,  a  deeper  and  more  per- 
sonal appreciation  of  the  charm  of  nature,  art, 
and,  above  all,  the  spiritualizing  of  that  love 
of  man  for  woman  which  is  stronger  than 
death  and  which  many  waters  cannot  drown. 

I  see  how  nature,  the  external  world  in  the 
midst  of  which  men  live  and  die,  which  was 
once  to  them  something  to  fear  and  struggle 
against,  fraught  with  mysterious  spirits  whom 
it  was  necessary  to  placate  by  sacrifice  and 
ritual,  has  now  become  a  thing  of  beauty,  full 
of  mystic  influences,  uplifting  the  soul,  com- 
forting man  in  sorrow,  until,  with  Words- 
worth, it  becomes  an  inlet  into  the  spiritual 
world. 

I  see  the  development  of  sexual  love  from  a 
mere  thing  of  the  senses  to  an  uplifting 
experience  that  leads  men  to  their  highest 
powers,  that  love  which  transforms  all  nature 
and  life,  and  sits  enthroned  beside  the  eternal 

76 


INTELLECTUAL  IDEALS 

laws.  I  see  the  innumerable  symbols  of  the 
various  phases  of  this  universal  passion: 
Helen,  the  type  of  the  purely  physical  charm 
of  woman;  Penelope,  the  faithful  wife  and 
mother;  Nausicaa,  girlish  and  sweet  in  the  in- 
nocence of  her  youthful  charm;  Tristan  and 
Iseult,  Francesca  da  Eimini,  Komeo  and 
Juliet,  in  all  of  whom  the 

"dusky  strand  of  death  inwoven  here 

With  dear  Love's  tie  makes  love  himself  more  dear" ; 

Beatrice,  in  whom  the  earthly  and  divine  are 
mingled ;  and  Laura,  pure  woman,  yet  a  spirit 
too,  and,  after  her  death,  an  ever-abiding  in- 
fluence that  draws  the  soul  of  her  lover  from 
the  transient  things  of  earth  to  the  eternal 
beauty  of  the  heavenly  life;  and  so  on  down  to 
the  present  age,  when  Browning  makes  love 
the  great  element  which  raises  man  to  Grod 
himself. 

I  see  the  development  of  the  love  of  man  for 
man,  the  noble  ideal  of  true  friendship,  ex- 
emplified in  the  stories  of  Orestes  and  Pylades, 
Damon  and  Pythias,  of  all  of  whom  it  can  be 
said,  as  it  w^as  said  of  Saul  and  Jonathan, 
^^They  were  lovely  and  pleasant  in  their  lives, 
and  in  their  death  were  not  divided.'^  I 
see  the  development  of  that  spirit  of  pity 
and  compassion  for  the  lowly  and  the  down- 

77 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

trodden  of  life,  that  pity  which,  practically 
unknown  to  the  nations  of  antiquity,  was  first 
preached  by  the  Son  of  man,  was  largely  lost 
in  the  chaos  of  the  Middle  Ages,  but  which  in 
our  own  times  has  come  to  new  life,  and  which 
seems  to  be  the  one  thing  in  the  teaching  of 
Christ  which  is  becoming  more  and  more 
widely  spread,  which  multiplies  hospitals  and 
asylums,  sets  men  to  studying  the  means  of 
preventing  crime  and  suffering,  poverty  and 
disease,  and  extends  a  veil  of  compassion  over 
even  the  vilest  of  mankind. 

And,  finally,  I  see  the  development  of  that 
deepest  of  all  phases  of  the  inner  life  of  man- 
kind, the  solemn  questions  of  the  why,  whence, 
and  whither  of  life.  I  see  the  beginnings 
of  a  belief  in  the  immortality  of  the  soul, 
away  back  in  the  mysteries  of  Greece,  and  in 
the  deep  and  never-failing  influence  of  Plato, 
with  his  noble  thoughts  of  the  ideal  world,  of 
which  the  present  is  only  a  dim  shadow,  of 
that  spirit  land  which  is  the  true  home  of  the 
soul.  I  see  the  mingling  of  Platonism  and  the 
teaching  of  Christ,  ever  developing  down  the 
centuries,  spiritualizing  and  elevating  the 
thoughts  of  saints,  poets,  and  philosophers; 
and,  lastly,  I  see  the  influence  of  the  Son  of 
God    himself,    whose    resurrection    was    the 

78 


INTELLECTUAL  IDEALS 

pledge  of  eternal  life  for  all  those  who  believe 
in  him.  I  see  the  indescribable  change  made 
in  the  thoughts,  feelings,  hopes  of  mankind; 
the  countless  triumphant  deaths;  men  and 
women  who  have  crossed  the  dark  stream  that 
flows  between  this  life  and  the  next,  trust- 
ing in  Him  who  has  said,  "Lo,  I  am  with  you 
always,  even  unto  the  end'';  and  beyond  the 
river  I  catch  a  glimpse  of  that  beautiful  dream 
of  the  heavenly  life,  sung  by  countless  poets, 
that 

Happy  harbor  of  the  saints, 
That  sweet  and  blessed  soil, 
•  Wherein  no  sorrow  may  be  found. 
No  grief,  no  care,  no  toil. 

And  as  I  think  over  all  these  things  I  have  a 
new  and  deeper  conviction  of  the  greatness 
and  beauty  of  life,  nature,  man  himself;  and 
if  reading  has  done  nothing  else,  it  has  given 
my  mind  the  inspiring  picture  of  a  world 
full  of  beauty,  created  and  guided  by  divine 
love,  a  picture  ever  developing  and  growing 
into  clearer  shape  as  the  years  roll  by. 


79 


READING  FOR  ENTERTAINMENT 
AND  PLEASURE 


81 


This  volume  in  my  hand,  I  hold  a  charm 
Which  lifts  me  out  of  reach  of  wrong  or  harm. 
I  sail  away  from  trouble;  and  most  blest 
Of  every  blessing,  can  myself  forget. 

— The  Spectator, 


82 


CHAPTER  IV 

Reading  for  Entertainment  and  Pleasure 

For  a  number  of  years  I  have  come  more 
and  more  to  feel  that  knowledge  consisting  of 
scattered  unrelated  facts  is  not  very  valuable 
or  satisfactory,  that  in  all  our  study  we  should 
be  guided  by  some  general  principle ;  for  then, 
and  then  only,  will  facts,  to  use  a  figure  of 
William  James,  group  themselves  together 
as  grapes  about  the  stem.  And  what  is  true 
of  acquiring  knowledge  is  also  true  of  any  at- 
tempt to  impart  information.  Not  only  the 
book  itself  should  have  a  unity  in  its  whole 
plan,  but  each  individual  chapter  should  have 
some  general  plan  of  its  own. 

To  carry  out  this  principle,  however,  in  such 
a  book  as  the  present  is  fraught  with  difficulty ; 
for  it  largely  consists  of  reminiscences  and 
reflections  on  a  large  number  of  books,  read 
during  a  period  of  many  years.  I  have  tried 
in  the  preceding  chapter  to  show  how  all  books 
of  information  I  have  read  gradually  com- 
bined to  give  me  a  general  conspectus  of  the 

83 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

world  as  a  whole.  Later  I  shall  speak  of  the 
works  of  the  various  poets  which  are  naturally 
related  one  to  the  other  by  the  nature  of  their 
subject-matter.  As  I  look  over  the  past,  how- 
ever, I  find  that  I  have  read  more  or  less  des- 
ultorily a  large  number  of  books  which  can 
with  difficulty  be  included  under  any  one  con- 
venient head;  books  read  at  hazard,  without 
any  thought  of  seeking  profit,  information, 
lessons  of  life  (although,  of  course,  many  of 
them  contain  more  or  less  of  these  things), 
but  chiefly  from  a  desire  to  read  what  has  been 
interesting  and  to  pass  away  a  pleasant  hour 
or  two. 

I  have  tried  in  the  preceding  chapter  to  give 
a  brief  outline  of  the  intellectual  side  of  my 
reading,  as  it  applied  to  the  general  develop- 
ment of  literature,  history,  and  civilization. 
Many  of  the  books  thus  read  were  read  merely 
for  pleasure  at  first,  and  only  later  did  I  per- 
ceive how  they  fitted  into  the  general  scheme 
of  study  which  I  had  proposed  for  myself.  On 
the  other  hand,  many  of  the  books  were  read 
for  one  purpose  only — the  light  they  cast 
upon  the  development  of  civilization  I  was 
seeking  to  comprehend.  Of  these  books  some 
were  dry   and   uninteresting   in    themselves, 

some  were  pamphlets  and  theses,  collections  of 

84 


READING  FOR  ENTERTAINMENT 

minor  writers,  philological  discussions,  lin- 
guistic and  literary  dissertations.  The  pleas- 
ure I  received  from  such  reading  was  not  in 
the  style,  or  even  the  thought  itself,  but  in 
the  consciousness  that  these  things  were  neces- 
sary for  the  view  of  the  world  and  man  which 
little  by  little  had  become  the  intellectual  goal 
of  all  my  reading.  Hence  it  often  happened 
that  a  dry  compilation  of  facts  became  vivi- 
fied by  a  genuine  feeling  of  pleasure,  because 
I  found  in  it  some  principle,  some  ray  of  light, 
which  illuminated  what  before  had  been  only 
a  mass  of  disconnected  facts. 

There  is  a  whole  group  of  books,  however, 
which  I  have  read,  not  with  any  particular 
purpose  of  obtaining  information  or  intellec- 
tual benefit,  but  from  a  natural  inclination, 
for  the  sake  of  entertainment,  diversion,  pass- 
ing away  of  time.  When  I  speak  of  entertain- 
ment or  amusement  I  do  not  necessiarily  rele- 
gate the  books  referred  to  under  this  head  to  a 
lower  sphere  of  reading,  for  oftentimes  the 
highest  forms  of  art  are  only  a  higher  form 
of  entertainment,  and  the  pleasure  received 
by  many  people  from  a  cheap  novel,  a  melo- 
drama at  the  theater,  is  the  same,  in  principle, 
though  not  in  quality  and  degree,  as  that 
experienced  by  those  who  have  felt  the  charm 

85 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

of  the  dialogues  of  Plato,  the  paintings  of 
Raphael,  or  the  plays  of  Shakespeare. 

When  we  speak  of  books  whose  chief  func- 
tion it  is  to  amuse  us,  however,  the  first  thing 
we  think  of,  of  course,  is  the  novel,  which 
has  come  to-day  to  be  the  most  universally 
popular  means  of  spending  an  idle  hour,  sur- 
passing, in  this  respect,  even  the  theater,  with 
which  it  has  so  much  in  common.  As  I  look 
back  over  the  reading  of  my  life  one  of  the 
things  that  strike  me  most  is  the  large  num- 
ber of  works  of  fiction — ^many  people  would 
call  them  "trash" — that  I  have  read.  I  sup- 
pose I  ought  to  feel  ashamed  of  having  read  so 
much  that  is  useless,  of  having  wasted  so  much 
precious  time  that  might  have  been  used  better 
otherwise.  But,  somehow,  that  is  not  the  feel- 
ing I  have.  It  is  true  that  in  more  recent 
years  I  have  found  a  decided  change  in  my 
taste  in  regard  to  fiction,  as  well  as  other 
things.  Many  a  book  that  fascinated  me  in 
youth,  over  which  I  would  spend  half  the 
night,  seems  to  me  flat  and  tasteless  now.  Far 
back  in  the  early  boyhood  days  I  see  rise  before 
me  the  cheap  dime  novels;  the  stories  in 
such  periodicals  as  the  Boys  and  Girls' 
Weekly  Magazine;  then  the  series  of  Oliver 
Optic,  Horatio  Alger,  and  in  later  years  Mrs. 

86 


READING  FOR  ENTERTAINMENT 

Evans,  Hall  Caine,  Marie  Corelli,  and  scores 
of  the  so-called  best-sellers  of  to-day,  for  I 
have  read  them  all  more  or  less. 

In  college  and  in  later  days  the  study  of 
languages  and  literature  brought  with  it  the 
reading  of  foreign  novels,  for  whatever  may 
be  said  of  novels  as  a  whole,  they  serve  a  most 
useful  purpose  in  acquiring  a  vocabulary  in 
a  foreign  tongue.  The  first  book  I  ever  read 
in  Spanish  was  a  translation  of  Dumas'  San 
Felice,  and  the  compelling  interest  of  that 
master  of  fascinating  narrative  carried  me 
along,  so  that,  before  I  knew  it,  I  acquired  the 
power  to  read  the  language  without  difficulty. 

The  field  of  fiction  which  has  presented  an- 
other phase  of  interest,  not  merely  pastime,  or 
the  acquiring  more  rapidly  another  tongue, 
but  as  forming  part  of  the  great  stream  of 
European  literature,  I  have  spoken  of  in  the 
preceding  chapter.  Here,  as  elsewhere, 
France  has  had  a  leading  part  in  the  develop- 
ment of  the  modern  novel,  and  it  is  in  tracing 
the  gradual  change  of  mediaeval  romances 
from  poetic  to  prose  versions,  the  introduction 
of  new  ideals  and  views  of  life,  the  enormous 
infiuence  of  Amadis  de  Gaule,  D'Urfe's  As- 
tree.  Mile,  de  Lafayette,  Le  Sage,  Rousseau, 
and  others  down  to  Balzac — who,  as  Henry; 

87 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

James  once  said,  is  not  only  tha  founder  of 
the  modern  novel,  he  is  the  modern  novel^ — 
that  we  see  the  cause  of  the  universal  popu- 
larity of  fiction  to-day,  and  understand  how 
the  old  inborn  "lust  zw  fabulieren,^^  which 
mankind  has  drawn  from  Mother  Nature,  and 
which  once  found  expression  in  epic  poetry, 
mythology,  and  fairy  tales,  now  finds  expres- 
sion in  the  novel  and  short  story. 

As  for  the  French  novels,  I  read  Balzac 
with  admiration  for  his  genius,  power  of  cre- 
ating characters,  and  influence,  but  always 
with  a  feeling  of  depression  at  the  end.  Zola 
has  always  left  a  feeling  of  disgust,  not  only 
because  of  the  book  itself,  but  because  of  the 
theory  behind  it,  the  assumption  that  man  is 
a  gorilla,  a  wild  beast,  foul,  cruel,  devilish, 
that  woman  is  baleful,  leading  men  to  their 
destruction,  the  very  gate  to  hell,  janua  di- 
abolic as  Saint  Jerome  once  said.  Maupassant 
I  can  admire  for  his  perfect  style,  but  I  am 
repelled  by  the  unworthy  subject-matter. 
Daudet  alone  has  won  my  genuine  respect  and 
admiration  for  his  pathos,  humor,  kindly 
sympathy,  and  oftentimes  tenderness,  though 
he  too,  at  times,  falls  into  the  lower  manner 
of  the  realistic  novels.  The  vast  majority  of 
the  novels  I  have  read  mean  but  little  to  me 

88 


BEADING  FOR  ENTERTAINMENT 

now ;  most  of  them  I  have  forgotten ;  even  the 
plots  are  gone.  The  sum  total  of  lasting  bene- 
fit seems  to  me  comparatively  small;  a  pas- 
time, pleasant  in  many  cases,  very  unpleasant 
in  the  case  of  Zola,  Flaubert,  and  Maupas- 
sant— that  is  about  all.  As  for  increased 
knowledge  of  life,  I  hardly  knoiw  what  to 
say.  In  the  case  of  poets  and  the  great 
prose  writers,  essayists,  historians,  and  phi- 
losophers I  cannot  feel  grateful  enough  for 
what  they  have  done  for  me.  When  it  comes 
to  novels  the  case  is  very  different.  I  have 
never  been  able  to  make  up  my  mind  as  to 
whether,  on  the  whole,  they  are  beneficial  or 
not.  It  may  be  said  that  the  historical  novel 
adds  to  our  knowledge  of  history;  yet,  while 
history  has  always  been  my  favorite  reading, 
I  have  never  felt  any  satisfaction  in  the  in- 
formation gained  from  novels.  I  have  always 
had  a  feeling  that  it  might  be  true  to  fact  or 
might  not,  and  if  I  wished  to  be  sure  of  its 
correctness,  I  should  have  to  study  the  period 
myself. 

As  for  giving  a  final  opinion  on  the  value 
of  the  novel  as  a  whole,  I  confess  that  I  do  not 
feel  at  all  confident  in  my  ability  to  do  so. 
Some  critics  have  looked  upon  it  as  greater 
than  the  drama  itself.    To  me  such  judgment 

89 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

seems  strangely  exaggerated;  and  yet,  owing 
to  the  vastness  of  the  field,  I  feel  that  I  have 
not  had  the  time  or  inclination  to  make  a 
systematic  study  of  the  subject,  for  the  pur- 
pose of  acquiring  a  final  opinion.  To  give  an 
adequate  criticism  of  a  play  of  Shakespeare, 
Dante's  Divine  Comedy,  Tennyson's  In  Me- 
moriam,  we  must  read  them  a  number  of 
times,  must  study  the  sources,  and  especially 
knoiw  something  about  the  times  in  which 
they  were  written.  Then  after  long  thought 
we  may  be  able  to  express  the  judgment  that 
has  gradually  formed  itself  in  our  minds.  Can 
any  one  do  this  with  the  novel?  Take  the 
French  novel — what  a  vast  ocean  it  is !  Who 
would  dare  to  venture  on  it  with  the  purpose 
of  charting  accurately  all  its  gulfs  and  bays? 
What  a  task  for  a  man  to  undertake  the  pro- 
found study  of  Balzac  alone,  with  his  scores 
of  volumes,  or  the  enormous  mass  of  Zola, 
Daudet,  Bourget,  Flaubert,  to  say  nothing  of 
the  German  novelists — Sudermann,  Ebner- 
Eschenbach,  Spielhagen,  Freytag;  or  the  Span- 
iards Galdos  and  Valdes,  the  Italians  Manzoni, 
D'Annunzio,  Fogazzjaro,  and  the  whole  vast 
number  of  English  novelists  of  former  times 
and  to-day. 

And  this  repeated  reading  is  not  enough. 

90 


READING  FOR  ENTERTAINMENT 

If  we  are  to  estimate  the  accuracy  of  the  pic- 
ture of  French  life  in  Balzac  and  Zola,  for 
instance,  we  must  spend  a  vast  amount  of  time 
in  verifying  all  sorts  of  facts,  travel,  science, 
medicine.  As  the  novel  is  universal,  so  the 
critic  must  be  a  universal  genius  of  cyclopedic 
knowledge.  For  my  part,  I  withdraw  baffled 
and  discouraged  from  the  effort  to  form  an 
adequate  judgment  as  to  the  true  value  of  the 
novel,  in  comparison  with  the  other  forms  of 
literature,  the  drama,  the  epic,  and  the  lyric. 
This  feeling  on  my  part  applies  especially 
to  the  so-called  problem  novels,  in  which  the 
morbid  side  of  human  personality  is  discussed. 
In  reading  these  books  I  have  been  aware  of 
a  constantly  repeated  experience.  At  first  I 
would  be  caught  by  the  grip  of  a  well-told 
story  and  would  read,  at  times,  almost  fever- 
ishly to  the  end,  and  then  almost  invariably 
would  come  a  reaction,  a  feeling  of  half-dis- 
gust at  myself,  for  being  led  to  what  has 
seemed  to  me  mental  dissipation.  This  feel- 
ing has  been  aroused  especially  by  that  wide- 
spread group  of  novels  in  which  social, 
mental,  and  other  problems  are  analyzed  ad 
nauseam.  We  all  have  our  troubles;  yet  the 
best  thing  we  can  do  is  to  forget  them,  at  least 
not  to  brood  over  our  past  mistakes  nor  an- 

91 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

alyze  our  motives  too  much.  Why  should  we 
linger  over  the  same  things  in  the  case  "of 
others?  I  often  feel  when  finishing  one  of 
these  depressing  novels  as  Ulysses  must  have 
felt  when,  after  spending  some  time  at  the 
mouth  of  Hades,  the  spirit  of  his  mother  said 
to  him,  "And  now,  haste  thee  back  with  all 
thy  heart  to  the  sunlight/' 

Of  course  this  does  not  apply  to  all  the 
novels  I  have  read:  many  of  them  have  been 
light,  pleasant  companions  for  an  idle  hour; 
many  have  given  me  pleasant  memories  of  in- 
teresting characters,  noble  thoughts  and  les- 
sons in  life.  Chief  among  these  exceptions  I 
may  mention  Cervantes,  Thackeray,  and 
especially  Dickens.  In  the  Don  Quixote,  the 
immortal  characters  of  the  hero  and  Sancho 
Panza  have  been  dear  to  me  as  the  symbols  of 
that  ideal  and  the  commonplace,  that  strange 
phenomenon  of  the  two  sides  to  all  things, 
the  sordid  and  the  base  on  one  side,  the  lofty 
and  the  romantic  on  the  other.  It  is  because 
we  all  of  us  have  our  moods,  dark  and  bright, 
that  the  Don  Quixote  has  become  a  precious 
possession  for  all  mapkind. 

But  a  deeper  and  more  personal  affection 
unites  me  to  Thackeray  and  Dickens.  From 
boyhood  I  have  loved  them  both,  and  this  love 

92 


READING  FOR  ENTERTAINMENT 

has  lasted  until  to-day.  Hearing  so  many 
people  discuss  the  question  as  to  which  of 
these  two  writers  was  the  greater,  I  was  un- 
decided for  a  long  time.  Finally  I  concluded 
that  I  need  not  make  a  decision,  that  it  was 
better  to  take  both  for  what  they  were  to  me. 
Thackeray  has  always  appealed  to  me  espe- 
cially for  the  finish  of  his  style,  for  his  good- 
humored  irony,  for  his  love  for  what  is  gentle, 
and  tender,  and  pure,  especially  in  woman,  for 
his  unforgettable  characters,  and  especially 
his  habit  of  chatting  with  the  reader,  his 
wise  and  shrewd  reflections  on  life,  the 
world  and  men.  In  spite  of  the  fact  that 
Henry  Esmond  is  generally  regarded  as  his 
masterpiece.  Vanity  Fair  is  my  favorite,  and 
I  can  read  it  over  and  over,  every  word  with 
unflagging  interest;  this  too  notwithstanding 
the  many  disagreeable  characters,  for  under- 
neath it  all  I  feel  the  kind  heart  of  the  author. 
My  feeling  for  Dickens  is  different  from 
that  I  have  for  Thackeray.  I  feel  the  lack  of 
elegance  in  his  style,  of  true  art  in  the  con- 
struction of  the  plot,  the  often  inexcusable 
exaggeration  of  character,  humorous  as  well 
as  pathetic,  the  dreadful  lack  of  taste  in  the 
last  words  of  Dora  in  David  Copperfleld.  Yet, 
for  some  reason  or  other,  Dickens  has  touched 

93 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGEAPHY 

my  heart  so  deeply  that  I  must  place  him  with 
the  few  books  that  I  love  the  most.  I  never 
tire  of  reading  him ;  I  can  take  him  up  at  any 
time,  dip  into  any  of  his  books  for  a  few  min- 
utes, and  he  interests  me  and  touches  me  at 
once.  I  have  often  tried  to  analyze  the  hold 
he  has  had  upon  me.  It  is  not  style,  or  plot,  or 
any  of  the  ordinary  qualities  of  talent  or 
genius,  for  to  me  Dickens  is  a  genius.  It  is 
not  the  great  gallery  of  immortal  figures — 
Micawber,  Pickwick,  David  Copperfield.  It 
is  something  deeper,  more  pervading  than  all 
this.  It  is  the  kindly  humor,  the  deep  pity 
for  the  unhappj^  among  men,  that  feeling  of 
the  brotherhood  of  mankind,  that  makes  the 
atmosphere  of  all  his  works.  As  I  grow  older 
it  has  seemed  to  me  that  the  one  thing  that 
makes  life  worth  living  is  the  spirit  of  kind- 
ness which  men  show  each  other.  Even  those 
whose  philosophy  of  life  has  become  saddened, 
who  are  without  God  and  without  hope  in  the 
world,  cling  to  this  thought  of  the  supremacy 
of  pity  and  mutual  help.  "Let  us  live,  and 
comfort  and  help  one  another,''  says  Leopardi, 
"in  order  to  bear  as  well  as  we  can  this  fatigue 
which  men  call  life.''  The  chief  cause  of  the 
universal  love  of  men  for  Lincoln  is  this  very 
element  in  his  nature,  that  element  of  pity 

94 


READING  FOR  ENTERTAINMENT 

and  compassion  for  the  poor  and  weak  and 
oppressed. 

The  literature  of  the  nineteenth  century  was 
deeply  impressed  by  three  things:  a  new  feel- 
ing for  and  worship  of  nature;  an  apparently 
irreconcilable  conflict  between  faith  and  doubt 
in  religious  matters,  brought  on  by  the  won- 
derful revelations  of  science,  especially  ge- 
ology and  astronomy;  and,  thirdly,  a  new 
interest  in  man  as  man,  however  lowly  his 
estate.  This  latter  phase  of  the  thought  of  the 
nineteenth  century  is  perhaps  more  profound 
than  we  are  likely  to  appreciate  at  first.  It 
shows  itself  in  the  constant  development  of  a 
sense  of  equality  among  men,  political,  social, 
and  industrial;  in  the  extraordinary  expan- 
sion of  philanthropy,  the  care  for  the  home- 
less, poor,  and  sick,  the  fatherless,  and  even 
the  criminal  in  our  prisons.  And  with  this 
external  change  in  the  care  of  the  submerged 
classes  has  come  a  corresponding  change  in 
the  hearts  of  men  toward  the  suffering  and 
unhappy.  Amid  the  changing  standards 
that  mark  our  religious  life  one  thing  stands 
out  above  all  others — the  ever-increasing 
spread  of  that  tenderest  of  all  elements  of  the 
character  and  teaching  of  Christ :  infinite  pity 

and  love  for  the  lowly  and  the  unhappy. 

95 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

And  it  is  just  here  that  Dickens  becomes 
significant  to  me,  that  I  can  understand  why 
he  has  so  won  the  hearts  of  countless  thou- 
sands, in  spite  of  his  manifest  faults  of  style 
and  thought.  Just  as  the  significance  of  Words- 
worth lies  in  the  fact  that  he  sums  up  the 
whole  spirit  of  modern  nature-love,  is  a  "priest 
to  us  all,  of  the  wonder  and  beauty  of  the 
world" ;  just  as  Tennyson  and  Browning  sum 
up  the  religious  doubts  and  struggles  that 
mark  the  spirit  of  the  mid-nineteenth  century, 
finally  coming  out  into  the  clear  light  of  op- 
timistic faith,  Tennyson  only  half-heartedly, 
it  seems  to  me,  but  Browning  with  a  robust  op- 
timism and  unconquerable  faith  in  God  and 
the  endless  life  of  the  soul ;  so  the  significance 
of  Dickens,  to  me,  lies  in  the  fact  that  he  sums 
up  the  sense  of  kindly  and  loving  pity,  of 
the  brotherhood  of  all  men,  the  beauty  of 
those  "little  nameless,  unremembered  acts  of 
kindness  and  of  love"  which  not  only  make  up 
the  best  part  of  every  good  man's  life,  as 
Wordsworth  says,  but  also  are  the  truest 
means  of  happiness  for  the  individual,  and  the 
very  atmosphere  of  true  social  life.  The  belief 
in  the  essential  goodness  of  man,  respect  and 
pity  for  the  lowly  and  the  suffering,  is  essential 
to  true  relations  among  men.     It  is  this  ele- 


READING  FOR  ENTERTAINMENT 

ment  that  I  have  found  and  admired  and  loved 
in  Dickens  as  in  scarcely  any  other  writer; 
and  it  is  this  that  has  made  me  feel  the  deep- 
est debt  of  gratitude  to  him.  And  in  hours  of 
depression,  of  a  sense  of  the  sordidness  and 
meanness  of  mankind,  I  have  always  found  in 
him  a  wholesome  influence,  an  antidote  for 
the  blackest  of  moods. 

Another  class  of  books  I  have  read  largely 
for  entertainment  and  pastime,  although,  of 
course,  not  without  desire  for  information  and 
general  culture,  are  books  of  travel.  Early  in 
life  I  became  fascinated  with  the  travels  of 
Bavard  Tavlor,  who  for  thp  first  timf^  opened 
my  eyes  to  the  charm  of  travel  in  foreign  lands. 
Especially  fascinating  in  my  boyhood  days 
have  been  the  stories  of  arctic  discovery,  the 
adventures  of  Dr.  Kane,  Sir  John  Franklin, 
and  later  Nordenskiold  and  Nansen.  Of 
travel  in  the  more  familiar  lands  of  western 
Europe,  there  is  no  need  of  mentioning  par- 
ticular names  of  books,  many  of  which  I  read 
just  before  starting  abroad  myself,  or  while 
on  the  journey.  Mark  T^v^ain's  genial  descrip- 
tions of  familiar  scenes,  with  their  touch  of 
kindly  satire,  have  always  been  a  refreshing 
contrast  to  more  pretentious  and  oftentimes 

dull  books  of  travel. 

97 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

I  cannot  refrain  from  making  particular 
mention,  however,  of  one  country  books  con- 
cerning which  have  furnished  me  with  some  of 
the  most  delightful  pastimes.  Ancestral  inter- 
est, in  the  first  place,  made  me  study  the  his- 
tory and  legends  of  Switzerland.  Study  at  the 
University  of  Geneva,  farm  life  on  the  hills 
above  Lausanne,  and  a  sojourn  in  a  primitive 
Alpine  village  in  the  Haslithal,  frequent  and 
long  visits  in  Bern,  Chamonix,  and  Zermatt, 
all  have  deeply  impressed  on  my  mind  a  charm 
and  love  for  that  land  that  can  never  grow  less. 
And  so  I  know  of  no  deeper  pleasure  or  more 
fascinating  entertainment  in  the  line  of  read- 
ing than  to  take  up  again  and  again  the  chap- 
ters of  Ruskin  treating  of  Switzerland,  espe- 
cially the  Mountain  Glory  and  the  Mountain 
Gloom,  such  classic  volumes  as  TyndalFs 
Glaciers  of  the  Alps,  Stephen's  Playground  of 
Europe;  and  especially  Whymper's  fascinat- 
ing Rambles  Among  the  Alps,  and  Guido  Rey's 
Matterhorn.  In  Whymper's  volume  I  have 
read,  I  know  not  how  many  times,  that  wonder- 
ful description  of  the  first  ascent  of  the  Mat- 
terhorn, the  strange  combination  of  circum- 
stances which  led  to  the  final  assault  in  July, 
1865,  the  easy  ascent,  the  glorious  hour  spent 
on  the  summit,  and  then  the  tragedy  in  the 

98 


EEADING  FOR  ENTERTAINMENT 

descent  over  the  slippery  crags  of  the  East 
Face.  When  I  read  this  story,  told  by  Whym- 
per  in  such  simple  yet  thrilling  language,  1 
always  have  the  same  feeling  as  when  I  read 
the  GEdipus  Tyrannus  of  Sophocles — the  sense 
of  an  inexorable  fate  against  which  no  human 
struggle  can  avail. 

Equally  fascinating  I  have  found  the  more 
recent  volume  of  Guido  Rey.  In  this  book  the 
whole  poetry  of  mountain-climbing  is  brought 
before  us — the  majesty  of  the  Matterhorn, 
its  crags  and  snow-peaks  rising  sheer  up  to  the 
mid-sky,  sharply  outlined  at  noonday,  softly 
roseate  at  sunset,  silvery  white  and  strangely 
mystic  beneath  the  light  of  the  stars,  or  echo- 
ing with  the  crash  of  thunder  and  shrouded 
with  clouds  torn  by  the  flash  of  lightning, 
when  the  storms  rage  about  the  summit. 
To  this  day,  when  I  am  tired  of  daily  rou- 
tine, nervous,  worried,  depressed,  I  can  get 
new  strength  and  calm  by  taking  up  these 
books  on  Switzerland,  and  seeing  rise  before 
my  mind's  eye  the  green  valleys,  the  upland 
pastures,  with  the  clear  streams  running 
through  them,  with  their  many  flowers  and 
tinkling  groups  of  cattle,  the  white  summits 
of  the  mountains,  the  rivers  of  ice  and  the 
vast  fields  of  snow, 

99 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

Where  the  white  mists  forever 
Are  spread  and  uphurled. 

In  the  stir  of  the  forces 
Whence  issued  the  world. 


Another  group  of  books  which  comes  tinder 
the  head  of  this  chapter  rather  than  any  other 
is  that  vague  class  known  under  the  general 
title  of  essays.  While,  of  course,  they  all  con- 
tain more  or  less  information,  or  exert  moral 
or  spiritual  influence,  yet  I  think,  in  my  case, 
at  least,  it  has  been  the  sense  of  entertainment 
and  pleasure  rather  than  desire  for  knowledge 
which  has  led  me  to  them.  This  entertain- 
ment in  the  case  of  many  writers  of  this  class 
— Addison,  Steele,  Lamb,  Wilson,  Holmes, 
Stevenson — has  been  produced  by  the  light, 
gentle,  humorous,  satirical  spirit  animating 
the  essay,  the  charm  and  perfection  of  style, 
a  light  touch  of  pathos,  followed  by  a  flash  of 
humor,  a  whimsical  thought,  good-natured 
ridicule,  description  of  interesting  customs 
and  odd  and  unusual  characters,  and  above 
all,  the  sense  of  conversing  with  a  wise  and 
witty,  kindly  and  cultivated  reader  of  books, 
observer  of  the  follies  of  mankind.  All  this 
has  made  the  reading  of  such  writers  a  genuine 
rest,  recreation,  and  pastime. 

Of  similar  effect  are  the  essays  of  a  specifl- 

100 


READING  FOR  ENTERTAINMENT 

cally  literary  or  biographical  nature,  such  as 
those  of  Macaulay,  Carlyle,  Lowell  in  Eng- 
lish, and  Fagiiet,  Brunetiere,  and  especially 
Sainte-Beuve,  in  French.  Of  course  here  in- 
struction plays  a  large  part;  but  this  instruc- 
tion is  given  in  the  form  of  entertainment, 
and  many  of  these  essays  were  given  at  first 
in  form  of  lectures. 

Allied  to  the  literary  essay  I  may  place  here 
the  various  volumes  of  biography  I  have  read. 
These  too  were  not  read  for  mere  information 
except  when  I  have  been  engaged  in  some  spe- 
cial study  of  my  own.  But  to  take  up  an 
interesting  volume  of  biography  such  as  Mor- 
ley's  Life  of  Gladstone,  for  example,  or  Lord 
Tennyson's  Life  by  his  son,  the  Life  and  Let- 
ters of  Browning,  Bielschowsky's  Goethe, 
Klihnemann's    Schiller,    Brander   Matthews's 


Moliere,  is  to  insure  oneself  an  hour's  genuine 
enjoyment  and  entertainment.  Especially  do 
I  remember  the  fascination  I  found  as  a  boy  in 
that  greatest  of  all  biographies,  BoswelPs  Life 
of  Johnson.  I  devoured  it  whole,  reading 
every  word,  even  the  letters  and  notes  at  the 
bottom  of  the  page.  Early  in  life  I  found  the 
same  charm  in  Plutarch's  Lives,  and  Samuel 
Smiles's  Self-Help.  I  have  never  forgotten  the 
effect  produced  upon  my  mind  in  my  senti- 

101 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

mental  da^^s  by  Frances  E.  Willard's  account 
of  her  sister,  who  died  early,  entitled  Nineteen 
Beautiful  Years.  The  portrait  in  that  book 
haunted  my  mind  for  years,  and  even  to-day 
a  poetic  interest  is  attached  to  the  face  of  one 
I  never  saw  or  knew,  except  in  the  memoir 
above  mentioned. 

'Tis  a  face  that  can  never  grow  older. 
That  never  can  part  with  its  gleam. 

'Tis  a  gracious  possession  forever; 
For  is  it  not  all  a  dream? 

Even  more  entertaining  to  me  were  the  vari- 
ous autobiographies  which  fell  into  my  hand 
and  which  I  eagerly  read.  What  the  world 
would  have  been  without  Saint  Augustine's 
Confessions  only  those  who  know  of  his  influ- 
ence on  such  men  as  Petrarch  and  Luther  can 
tell.  I  have  found  deep  enjoyment  in  the  auto- 
biographies of  Benvenuto  Cellini,  Gibbon, 
Alfteri,  and  Benjamin  Franklin.  Autobio- 
graphical in  their  nature  are  the  Essays  of 
Montaigne,  although  the  autobiographical  ele- 
ment here  is  chiefly  applied  to  the  author's 
inner^  life,  his  thoughts  on  all  things,  the 
books  he  has  read,  the  men  and  customs  he 
has  seen  at  home  and  abroad,  his  reflections 
on  the  life,  conduct,  foibles,  and  follies  of 
those  about  him  and  of  his  own  self.    I  know 

102 


READING  FOR  ENTERTAINMENT 

of  no  greater  pleasure  than  to  pick  up  a 
volume  of  Montaigne  and  see  him,  in  his  kindly 
yet  shrewd  and  incisive  way,  penetrate  to  the 
heart  of  men  and  things;  to  see  his  wisdom,  his 
common  sense,  his  hatred  of  sham,  and  espe- 
cially his  broad  tolerance  of  all  men's  opinions, 
as  expressed  in  the  motto  he  had  carved  on 
a  beam  in  the  ceiling  of  his  tower-study, 
^^Que  SgaiS'jef^^  And  all  this  is  couched  in 
language  typically  French,  remarkable  for 
clearness,  simplicity,  naturalness,  free  from 
mere  rhetoric,  pomposity,  affectation — a  lan- 
guage such  as  he  himself  loved:  ^^un  parler 
simple  et  naif^  tel  stir  le  papier  qu^d  la  houehe; 
un  parler  succulent  et  nerveux^  court ^  serre; 
esloigne  d'affectation^  desregle,  desconsu,  et 
hardy.^^^  And  back  of  all  this  gossip,  this 
talk  of  glory,  death,  education,  we  see 
the  clear-headed,  sensible  man,  courteous, 
witty,  logical,  frank,  tolerant,  not  deeply  re- 
ligious or  metaphysical,  whose  philosophy  is 
of  the  practical  sort  of  everyday  life — a  man 
who  with  Moliere  sums  up  the  essence  of 
French  character. 

My  more  thorough  acquaintance  with  Mon- 
taigne came  some  eight  or  ten  years  ago,  when 

1 A  language  simple  and  naive,  the  same  on  paper  as  in  the  mouth ;  a 
language  juicy  and  forceful,  short  and  pithy;  far  from  afifectation,  without 
rules,  bold  and  free. 

103 


K  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

for  some  months  I  was  suffering  from  a 
nervous  breakdown,  brought  on  by  overwork. 
I  had  lost  the  proper  perspective  of  life,  and  in 
my  eagerness  for  study  and  literary  work 
had  come  to  such  a  pass  that  I  could  not  read 
anything  for  some  time.  It  was  just  as  I  was 
recovering  from  this  trouble  that  I  read  Mon- 
taigne thoroughly,  slowly,  thoughtfully,  un- 
derlining and  making  notes  of  passages  that 
pleased  me,  and  starring  the  margins.  It  was 
just  the  book  I  needed  at  that  time,  with  its 
short,  unconnected  chapters  on  all  sorts  of 
subjects,  its  clear-headed  common  sense  on 
the  very  thing  that  had  broken  me  down. 
Above  all,  his  theory  of  life,  though  not  the 
highest,  was  just  what  I  needed  then — the 
folly  of  ambition,  desire  of  glory,  even  of 
learning,  sought  for  at  the  expense  of  health. 
I  have  never  forgotten  such  passages  as  that 
in  which  he,  the  lover  of  books  if  there  ever 
was  one,  declares  that  books  are  pleasant 
things  indeed,  but  if  from  poring  over  them  he 
should  be  in  danger  of  losing  his  health  and 
cheerfulness,  ^^nos  meilleures  pieces/^  he  would 
have  none  of  them.  For,  he  adds,  ^^je  sitis  de 
ceux  qui  pensent  leur  fruict  ne  pouvoir  contre- 
poiser  cette  perte,^^^     From  that  time  I  date 

1  Our  best  possessions.     I  am  one  of  those  who  think  that  their  fruit 
cannot  make  up  for  this  loss. 

104 


READING  FOR  ENTERTAINMENT 

a  more  rational  use  of  books  and  study 
myself. 

Yet  while  I  feel  grateful  to  Montaigne  for 
all  he  has  meant  to  me,  I  do  not  feel  the  same 
intense  affection  as  in  the  ease  of  some  other 
writers,  not  only  of  poetry,  but  of  prose  also. 
While  I  admired  him  for  his  amiable  charac- 
ter, for  the  intellectual  and  other  qualities 
which  make  him,  together  with  Moliere,  the 
type  of  the  French  genius,  yet  his  selfish, 
though  sensible  theory  of  life,  his  Epicurean 
manner  of  living,  his  stoical  and  pagan  view 
of  death,  his  lack  of  all  transcendental  and 
metaphysical  qualities,  his  formal  acceptance 
of  the  dogmas  of  the  church,  side  by  side  with 
the  utter  absence  in  his  Essays  of  any  mention 
of  God  and  the  immortality  of  the  soul,  could 
not  fail  to  leave  unsatisfied  that  phase  of  my 
own  nature  which  is  perhaps  the  deepest  of  all, 
a  sense  of  the  divine  and  the  spiritual  in  and 
over  and  beyond  all  things  material  in  life. 

This  spirit  has  been  fed  by  many  books  of 
different  lands  and  ages ;  by  Marcus  Aurelius 
and  Epictetus;  by  Cicero's  classic  expositions 
of  the  lofty  speculations  of  Greek  philoso- 
phers— Stoic,  Epicurean  and  Neo-Platonism 
— as  seen  in  his  De  Natura  Deorum,  Tusculan 
Disputations,   and,   above  all,   the  Somnium 

105 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

Scipionis;  it  has  been  fed  by  Boethius's  Con- 
solation of  Philosophy,  by  Saint  Augustine^s 
Confessions,  by  the  great  German  mystics— 
Tauler,  Eckhardt,  and  Suso;  by  Thomas  h 
Kempis's  Imitation  of  Christ,  and  by  the  more 
modern  writers,  such  as  John  Bunyan,  Henry 
Vaughn,  Novalis,  William  Blake,  and  Maurice 
Maeterlinck.  All  these  writers  have  helped 
to  develop  within  me  that  inborn  instinct 
toward  the  mystical  or  transcendental  side  in 
all  things. 

Two  men,  however,  have  had  especial  influ- 
ence on  me  in  this  respect,  and  have  come  in 
recent  years  to  share  with  the  great  poets  my 
unfailing  love  and  admiration.  The  spirit  of 
both,  however,  is  practically  one  and  the  same; 
for  Emerson,  after  all,  seems  to  me  to  be  only 
a  reincarnation  of  the  great  founder  of  Platon- 
ism  and  the  transcendental  mode  of  look- 
ing at  all  things.  In  reading  Emerson,  of 
course,  I  am  conscious  of  the  fact  that  he  has 
no  well-rounded  system  of  philosophy,  that 
his  poetry  lacks  a  certain  kind  of  finish  and 
melody,  that  his  essays  are  loosely  formed, 
made  up  of  scattered  thoughts,  deep  prophetic 
statements,  and  reasoning  not  carried  out  in 
connected  manner.  But  I  can  never  open  his 
essays  on  "Nature,''  "Love,''  the  "Poets,"  and 

106 


READING  FOR  ENTERTAINMENT 

others,  without  leaving  at  once  the  noise  and 
bustle,  the  smallness  and  meanness  of  everyday 
life,  and,  after  passing  a  step  or  two  of  dubious 
twilight,  coming  out  at  last  on  the  other  side, 
^^the  novel,  silent,  silver  lights,  and  darks  un- 
dreamed of,  where  I  hush  and  bless  myself 
with  silence.''  The  strange  spirit  that  always 
accompanies  my  reading  of  Emerson  has  al- 
ready been  expressed  by  Hermann  Grimm, 
and  I  too  can  say  with  him,  that  ^'whenever  I 
take  up  his  volume  I  feel  the  pure  air";  that 
"for  me  was  the  breath  of  life,  for  me  was  the 
rapture  of  spring,  for  me  love  and  desire;  for 
me  the  secret  of  wisdom  and  power;  me  too 
he  fills  with  courage  and  confidence." 

Similar  to  this  feeling  of  intense  delight 
which  I  have  found  in  Emerson  is  my  experi- 
ence with  Plato,  only  in  a  far  deeper  sense; 
for  the  faults  of  Emerson — loose  connection, 
staccato  style,  lack  of  philosophical  system — 
are  absent  from  the  Greek,  whose  dialogues 
are  as  marvelous  in  regard  to  form,  wit,  gentle 
humor,  and  dramatic  and  poetic  power  as  they 
are  true,  deep,  far-reaching,  and  fraught,  on 
every  page,  with  a  sense  of  the  abiding  and 
eternal.  I  have  come  in  recent  years  to  have 
as  deep  a  love  and  admiration  for  Plato  as  for 
Dante,   Homer,   Shakespeare,  or  any  of  the 

107 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

great  world  poets.  In  recent  years  I  say,  for 
my  love  is  of  comparatively  recent  date,  a  late, 
or,  perhaps,  a  belated  love.  I  had  read  some 
of  the  Dialogues  of  Plato  in  college,  had 
caught  a  glimpse  only,  however,  of  his  essen- 
tial qualities.  Of  course  in  my  reading  in 
succeeding  years  I  came  across  his  traces  con- 
tinually. But  it  is  only  when  I  came  into 
possession  of  Jowett's  translation,  and  sat 
down  to  read  through  practically  all  his 
works,  that  I  first  felt  my  soul  strangely 
warmed  within  me.  The  first  year  I  went 
through  the  dialogues  carefully,  reading, 
marking  the  margins,  and  taking  notes  on  the 
most  important  passages,  not  only  of  Plato 
himself,  but  of  Jowett's  introductions  to  the 
various  dialogues.  The  next  year  I  went  over 
the  same  work,  reading  especially  the  numer- 
ous marked  passages,  and  at  times  taking 
notes,  for  the  second  time,  of  the  passages 
which  appealed  to  me  most.  These  notes  I 
would  often  carry  with  me,  or  look  over  in  my 
study  at  college;  learning  many  of  them  by 
heart.  The  mere  repetition  of  these  passages 
I  have  found  to  have  a  calming  and  soothing 
effect  in  hours  of  discontent  and  anxiety. 
Ever  since,  I  have  gone  over  the  works  of  Plato 
once  a  year,  not  necessarily  thoroughly,  but 

108 


READING  FOR  ENTERTAINMENT 

enough  to  keep  fresh  in  my  mind  the  general 
tenor  of  the  several  dialogues  and  the  general 
spirit  of  his  teaching.  It  is  enough  for  me 
to  steep  myself  in  the  Platonic  atmosphere  at 
least  once  a  year. 

In  reading  Plato  I  have  not  been  led  pri- 
marily to  seek  for  information,  or  even  to 
work  out  whatever  system  of  philosophy  Plato 
may  have  had.  I  have  simply  been  irresistibly 
drawn  to  him  ever  since  I  first  became  really 
acquainted  with  him.  What  this  charm  and 
fascination  is  I  cannot  adequately  describe. 
It  consists  in  his  extraordinary  modernness, 
the  constant  delight  I  find  in  the  light  he 
throws  upon  all  questions  that  have  occupied 
the  attention  of  the  wiser  part  of  mankind, 
and  which  are  still  before  the  world  to-day. 
It  consists  likewise  in  the  pleasure  that  comes 
from  beautiful  thoughts  enshrined  in  beauti- 
ful language — Die  schone  Seele  in  der  schonen 
Form^ — for  the  English  translation  of  Jowett 
is  as  beautiful  as  the  Greek  of  Plato.  Then, 
again,  there  is  the  pleasure  that  comes  from 
being  able  to  trace  a  mighty  infiuence  on  life, 
literature,  philosophy,  and  religion  down 
through  the  centuries ;  to  see  how  without  that 
famous  reading  of  Cicero's  Platonic  treatise 

^  The  beautiful  soul  in  the  beautiful  form. 
109 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

Hortensius  Saint  Augustine  perhaps  would 
never  have  been  able  to  mold  Christian 
theology  as  he  did;  how  Platonism  gave  the 
highest  note  to  the  literature  of  the  Een- 
aissance,  to  Castiglione,  Michael  Angelo, 
Spenser,  and  Shakespeare;  how  it  pervades 
the  philosophy  of  Kant  and  Hegel,  Fichte  and 
Schelling,  as  well  a^  the  poetry  of  Words- 
worth and  Shelley  and  the  prose  of  Emerson. 
But  the  deepest  enjoyment  I  have  found  in 
Plato  is  in  his  supreme  power  of  making  real 
the  Ideal,  the  constant  sense  of  the  One  and 
the  Infinite,  that  comes  from  his  pages,  his 
never- failing  method  of  looking  at  everything 
against  the  background  of  eternity.  Many  are 
the  pictures  that  rise  before  me  as  I  write 
these  words:  the  figure  of  the  philosopher 
standing  in  the  corner  of  a  wall,  sheltered 
from  the  storm  of  sleet  and  dust  driven  along 
by  the  wind;  the  lofty  and  inspiring  myths 
such  as  that  of  the  cave,  which  represents 
things  seen  from  the  standpoint  of  earth 
alone ;  the  vision  of  Er ;  and  the  double  nature 
of  the  soul,  represented  by  the  chariot  drawn 
by  a  white  and  black  horse,  struggling  now 
upward,  now  downward,  under  the  guiding 
hand  of  Reason,  the  charioteer.  These  are 
some  of  the  elements  of  the  charm  which  Plato 

110 


READING  FOR  ENTERTAINMENT 

exerts  on  me.  However  it  may  be  analyzed, 
the  charm  exists  and  grows  in  strength  as  the 
years  go  on.  In  taking  up  the  Dialogues,  and 
opening  them  at  almost  any  place,  I  feel  some- 
thing as  Emerson  did  when,  telling  how  his 
house  stood  on  a  low  land,  with  limited  out- 
look, and  how  when  he  would  go  with  his 
friend  to  the  shore  of  the  little  river  near  by, 
and  take  the  boat,  ^Vith  one  stroke  of  the 
paddle  he  left  the  village  politics  and  person- 
alities behind,  and  passed  into  a  delicate  realm 
of  sunset  and  moonlight,  too  bright  almost  for 
spotted  man  to  enter  without  novitiate  and 
probation.'^ 

So  I,  too,  when,  in  the  early  hours  of  the 
morning,  I  open  the  pages  of  the  Symposium, 
Apology,  Phsedrus,  Gorgias,  or  the  Republic, 
and  read  only  a  few  pages,  am  carried,  in  an 
instant,  into  a  different  world,  away  from  the 
belittling  life  of  the  present,  into  a  serener  and 
larger  atmosphere.  I  catch  a  glimpse  of  the 
beautiful  life  of  ancient  Greece,  and  especially 
Athens,  with  its  temples  and  groves  and  pa- 
laestra, its  young  men  at  their  games,  the  elder 
ones  conversing  gravely  on  themes  of  the  high- 
est interest  to  the  soul. 

Above  all,  I  see  that  noblest  figure  in  the 
history  of  the  human  race,  after  the  Saviour 
111 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

himself,  Socrates,  the  deep,  original  thinker, 
the  kindly,  unassuming  teacher  of  all  m^en 
who  cared  to  listen  to  him,  "uttering  words 
of  beauty  and  freedom,  the  friend  of  man, 
holding  communion  with  the  EternaP';  not 
troubled  with  ambition  for  wealth  or  fame  or 
political  and  social  rank;  exemplifying  in  his 
own  life  his  own  ideal  of  the  philosopher,  the 
lover  of  truth  and  hater  of  falsehood ;  with  all 
his  desires  absorbed  in  the  interests  of  knowl- 
edge; having  no  meanness  in  him,  for  he  is 
the  spectator  of  all  time  and  all  existences, 
and  in  the  magnificence  of  this  contemplation 
regarding  the  life  of  man  as  nothing  to  him, 
and  without  fear  of  death;  of  a  social,  gra- 
cious disposition,  equally  free  from  cowardice 
and  arrogance;  one  who  learns  easily,  who 
repaembers  and  does  not  forget,  who  is  a  har- 
monious, well-regulated  mind,  and  to  whom 
truth  flows  sweetly  by  nature. 

Who  can  fail  to  be  uplifted  when  he  comes 
into  contact  with  such  a  character  as  this? 
And  like  the  sound  of  the  flute  in  the  ears  of 
the  mystic,  I  hear  his  voice  saying:  "O  Cal- 
licles,  I  am  persuaded  of  the  truth  of  these 
things,  and  I  consider  how  I  shall  present  my 
soul  whole  and  undefiled  before  the  Judge  in 
that  day.     Eenouncing  the  honors  at  which 

112 


BEADING  FOR  ENTERTAINMENT 

the  world  aims,  I  desire  only  to  know  the 
truth,  and  to  live  as  well  as  I  can,  and  when 
the  time  comes,  to  die.  And  to  the  utmost  of 
my  power  I  exhort  all  other  men  to  do  the 
same.  And  I  exhort  you  also  to  take  a  part  in 
the  great  combat,  which  is  the  combat  of  life, 
and  greater  than  every  other  earthly  conflict" ; 
and  again,  I  hear  him  uttering  that  most 
beautiful  of  all  ancient  prayers  with  which  he 
ends  his  discourse  with  Phsedrus:  "Beloved 
Pan,  and  all  ye  other  gods,  who  haunt  this 
place,  give  me  beauty  in  the  inward  soul; 
and  may  the  outward  and  the  inward  man 
be  at  one.  May  I  reckon  the  wise  to  be  the 
wealthy,  and  may  I  have  such  a  quantity  of 
gold  as  none  but  the  temperate  can  carry. 
Anything  more?  That  prayer  is  enough  for 
me.''  And,  finally,  I  see  him  in  the  little 
prison  at  Athens  discoursing  of  the  immor- 
tality of  the  soul,  gently  refusing  to  make  his 
escape  from  the  unjust  death  imposed  upon 
him  by  the  laws  of  Athens,  going  to  his  last 
sleep  with  such  calmness  and  tranquillity  and 
peace  that  I  too  have  felt  as  Phaedo  did,  when 
he  said  of  Socrates,  "His  mien  and  his  lan- 
guage were  so  noble  and  fearless  in  the  hour 
of  death  that  to  me  he  appeared  blessed." 


113 


POETRY  AND  POETS 


116; 


Blessings  be  with  them,  and  eternal  praise, 
Who  gave  us  nobler  loves,  and  nobler  cares — 
The  Poets,  who  on  earth  have  made  us  heirs 

Of  truth  and  pure  delight  by  heavenly  lays! 

— Wordsworth. 


116 


CHAPTER  V 

Poetry  and  Poets 

I  HAVE  already  spoken  of  my  love  for  read- 
ing, a  love  going  back  to  my  childhood.  This 
fondness  for  reading  has  been  universal,  has 
extended  to  all -sorts  and  conditions  of  books, 
has  been  closely  connected  with  an  intellec- 
tual curiosity  and  a  certain  thirst  for  knowl- 
edge for  its  own  sake;  it  has  at  times  taken 
the  form  of  a  pastime,  desire  for  entertain- 
ment, and  in  this  way  has  found  satisfaction 
in  history,  science,  biography,  travel,  novels, 
and  books  of  general  literature. 

There  is  one  phase  of  it,  however,  which  has 
been  deeper  than  all  the  rest,  which  sums  up, 
so  to  speak,  and  which  has  imparted,  above  all 
other  kinds  of  reading,  a  certain  feeling  of 
personal  love.  This  is  poetry.  I  cannot  tell 
when  I  began  to  feel  this  love  for  poetry. 
Away  back  in  the  mist  of  childhood  years  I  can 
see  that  it  existed,  and  amid  all  the  vicissitudes 
of  life  it  has  continued  to  broaden  and  deepen, 
until  to-day  it  seems  to  include  in  itself  all 

117 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

the  charm  I  have  found  in  music^  or  the  plastic 
arts,  in  nature,  the  joys  of  home  and  friends, 
the  beauty  of  woman,  the  charm  of  innocent 
childhood,  and  the  deeper  aspirations  of  the 
soul  toward  the  spiritual  world. 

There  is  an  irresistible  fascination  for  me 
in  all  poetry.  I  can  read  certain  poems  over 
and  over  again  and  never  get  tired.  Scores 
of  times,  literally,  I  have  read,  in  whole  or  in 
part,  such  poems  as  Gray's  Elegy,  Words- 
worth's Tintern  Abbey,  Spenser's  Epithala- 
mium,  the  sonnets  of  Shakespeare,  Keats's 
Ode  to  the  Nightingale,  certain  odes  of 
Horace,  and  the  songs  of  Heine  and  Goethe, 
and  ever  with  increased  pleasure  and  a  deeper 
appreciation  of  their  beauty. 

Often  a  few  lines  of  poetry  will  have  a  re- 
freshing and  strengthening  influence  on  my 
tired  mind  and  soul.  Just  a^  after  a  day's 
toil,  tired  and  nervous,  troubled  in  spirit,  it 
may  be,  discouraged  and  unhappy,  I  have 
found  rest,  peace,  and  uplift  in  walking  to- 
ward the  setting  sun,  or  lying  on  some  sunny 
slope  overlooking  a  wide  landscape;  just  as 
music  often  has  relaxed  the  tension  of  soul 
and  spirit,  so,  in  the  same  or  a  similar  way,  a 
few  lines  of  poetry  can  rest,  calm,  cheer, 
strengthen  my  mind,  giving  it  a  touch  of  some- 

118 


POETEY  AND  POETS 

thing  higher  than  the  little  round  of  daily 
tasks,  a  sense  of  eternal  beauty  in  the  world 
around  me. 

Later  came  the  more  intellectual  element  in 
my  reading  of  poetry.  It  was  no  longer  a  care- 
free wandering  through  the  flowery  fields  of 
song.  The  new  ideals  of  scholarship  which  I 
learned  in  college  and  university  study,  the  de- 
sire to  obtain  an  adequate  general  conception 
of  the  world's  best  literature,  the  spirit,  in 
short,  I  have  tried  to  describe  in  Chapter  III 
brought  about  a  new  element  in  my  feeling  for 
poetry.  I  now  began  to  read  the  poets  as  a 
whole,  the  lesser  as  well  as  the  greater,  not 
only  the  good  but  the  bad  and  mediocre  pas- 
sages, that  can  be  found  in  the  works  of  even 
the  greatest;  striving  to  get  a  true  conception 
of  the  position  the  poet  in  question  occupied 
in  the  literature  of  his  own  land  as  well  as  in 
the  world's  literature;  the  development  of  the 
poet's  genius,  the  influences  that  shaped  his 
work,  and  the  influence  he  himself  exerted  on 
others ;  the  way  in  which  he  reflected  and  in- 
terpreted the  thoughts,  fancies,  aspirations  of 
his  own  time  and  civilization. 

Yet  this  intellectual  system  of  studying 
poetry  did  not  destroy  my  old  feeling  of  per- 
sonal love;  and  the  long  hours  of  study,  the 
119 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

search  for  sources  and  parallels,  historical 
and  other  influences,  were  brightened  and 
cheered  by  a  sense  of  elevated  thoughts,  up- 
lifting ideals,  noble  views  of  life,  and  unfor- 
getable  figures  of  gallant  men  and  gentle 
women,  making  beautiful  the  rime  in  which 
they  are  enshrined.  Why  do  I  read  the  poets, 
then?  Surely,  not  merely  for  the  sake  of  cul- 
ture, or  to  be  able  to  talk  more  or  less  intelli- 
gently about  them,  but,  rather,  because  of  the 
deep  and  thrilling  experiences  I  have  had  in 
communing  with  them.  Does  a  man  who  has 
climbed  the  snowy  peak  of  some  Alpine  moun- 
tain, with  its  memories  of  blue  sky  above, 
green  valleys  below,  snow-fields  and  glaciers 
all  around,  the  sense  of  rest  and  peace  that 
comes  after  every  power  of  mind  and  body  has 
been  exerted  to  the  utmost,  and  the  peace  of 
the  mountains  has  entered  his  soul — does  such 
a  man,  I  say,  ever  forget  that  experience? 
Does  a  man  ever  forget  the  golden  days  of 
youth  when  for  the  first  time  he  meets  the  one 
being  in  all  the  world  who  is  all  and  all  to 
him ;  when  all  nature  about  him  took  on  a  new 
and  strange  beauty  and  meaning;  when  the 
stars  seemed  to  look  down  on  him  with  kindly 
interest;  when  the  birds  sang  more  sweetly 
than  ever  before;  when  the  flowers  seemed  to 

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POETRY  AND  POETS 

be  brighter  and  the  whole  world  full  of  some- 
thing he  had  never  known  before?  It  is  be- 
cause poetry  keeps  fresh  these  feelings  through- 
out the  years ;  because  it  gives  us  glimpses  of 
ennobling  experiences  of  others;  because  it 
hangs  a  vaporous  mist  of  beauty  over  all 
things ;  because  it  makes  us  see  that  beside  the 
petty  and  sordid  side  of  humanity  there  is  a 
heroic,  kindly,  sympathetic  side;  because  it 
shows  us  back  of  the  cosmic  terror  of  nature 
the  nameless  charm  of  sunrise  and  sunset,  of 
hill  and  valley ;  because  it  shows  us  the  beauty 
of  family  life,  and  elevates  the  humble  house- 
hold duties  till  they  shine  aloft  like  stars ;  and, 
finally,  because  it  joins  hands  with  philosophy 
and  religion  and  points  the  way  to  a  higher 
spiritual  life,  where  "all  broken  fragments 
shall  be  made  whole,  all  enigmas  solved,  all 
legitimate  desires  shall  be  satisfied" — it  is,  I 
say,  because  poetry  does  this,  that  I  have  loved 
it  all  my  life. 

In  speaking  of  the  poets  as  above,  of  course, 
I  have  in  mind  chiefly  those  whom  I  have 
learned  to  love,  and  whom  I  read  over  more  or 
less  regularly  every  year.  There  are  some  of 
the  poets  of  various  times  and  tongues  whom 
I  have  read  primarily  from  an  intellectual 
motive,  a  desire  to  complete  my  knowledge  of 

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A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

a  period,  a  phase  of  literature,  to  trace  an  in- 
fluence, or  round  out  my  general  view  of  litera- 
ture. Yet  invariably  afterward  comes  the 
deeper,  more  uplifting  pleasure  that  is  the 
peculiar  function  of  all  true  poetry  to  give. 

This  has  been  especially  true  of  my  experi- 
ence with  the  classic  poets  of  Greece  and 
Eome.  Early  in  life  I  began  the  study  of  Greek 
and  Latin  by  myself;  and  I  read  practically 
all  of  Livy  and  Herodotus,  thinking  at  that 
time  that  I  ought  to  finish  one  book  before 
beginning  another ;  for  reading  by  extracts  was 
unknown  to  me.  I  did  this  at  night,  after  the 
day's  work,  and  the  pleasure  must  have  been 
great,  or  I  should  not  have  been  able  to  keep 
it  up  so  long.  But  it  was  a  purely  intellectual 
pleasure,  the  sense  of  learning  a  new  lan- 
guage, of  acquiring  a  vocabulary,  of  overcom- 
ing difficulties,  solving  problems  of  syntax,  of 
knowing  something  of  two  such  famous  lan- 
guages as  Greek  and  Latin.  For  in  those 
early,  boyish  days  I  felt  as  much  admiration 
for  a  man  who  knew  Greek  as  the  Feinmes 
Savantes  of  Moliere  felt  for  the  pedantic 
Vadius.  Afterward,  in  college,  I  went  over 
most  of  the  classic  poets,  doing  work  for  spe- 
cial honors  in  the  Greek  dramatists,  all  this 
with  pleasure  and  profit.     Yet,  after  all,  ex- 

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POETRY  AND  POETS 

cept  in  the  case  of  some  of  the  Latin  poets, 
my  real  enthusiastic  and  abiding  love  for  the 
ancient  poets  has  flowered  late,  long  after  a 
similar  love  for  the  modern  poets,  and  has 
formed,  as  it  were,  the  crowning  point  of  the 
development  of  my  love  for  poetry  in  general. 

Of  the  Greek  poets  I  have  never  been  able 
to  penetrate  deeply  into  Pindar,  for  I  have 
never  had  the  opportunity  to  study  him  as  he 
ought  to  be  studied.  Something  of  ^schylus, 
Sophocles,  and  Euripides  I  had  read  in  col- 
lege, but  it  has  only  been  in  later  years  that  I 
have  had  time  and  opportunity  to  go  over 
them  so  often  and  thoroughly  as  to  form  some 
adequate  personal  estimate  of  their  real 
quality.  I  have  done  this,  for  the  most  part, 
in  translations;  for,  though  the  Greek  of 
Homer  has  become  easy  to  me,  that  of  the 
dramatists  is  not  so,  and,  like  Montaigne,  I 
am  not  able  to  seize  it  a  la  volee. 

In  this  way  much  of  the  greatness  of  the 
Greek  tragic  writers  has  escaped  me,  but 
even  so  I  have  found  delight  in  reading 
over  their  works  so  often  as  to  have  the 
plots  and  general  theme  of  their  dramas 
fiixed  in  my  mind;  to  have  gained  at  first-hand 
a  clear  conception  of  the  essential  features 
of  the  classic  drama,  and  thus  possess  the 

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A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGKAPHY 

absolutely  necessary  basis  for  tracing  the 
development  of  the  drama  down  through  the 
ages,  through  Seneca  among  the  Latins, 
through  the  adaptations  and  translations  of 
the  Kenaissance,  to  Corneille  and  Kacine  in 
France  and  their  imitators  in  Germany,  Italy, 
and  England.  Nay,  it  is  only  by  tracing  this 
classic  influence  of  the  Greek  dramatists  in 
the  sixteenth  century  in  England,  and  follow- 
ing out  the  contest  between  it  and  the  indige- 
nous mediaeval  liturgical  drama,  the  mys- 
teries and  miracle  plays,  based  on  the  religious 
services  in  the  Eoman  Church,  that  I  have 
been  able  to  see  the  cause  for  the  different 
development  of  the  drama  in  France  and  Eng- 
land; hoAV  in  the  former  country  the  classic 
influence  drove  back  the  mediaeval  influence 
and  reigned  supreme  for  two  hundred  years; 
how,  on  the  other  hand,  Shakespeare  turned 
chiefly  to  the  Romantic,  mediaeval  elements, 
and  by  his  mighty  genius  caused  them  to  pre- 
vail over  the  classic  influence.  But  far  more 
valuable  than  all  this  has  been  the  deeper 
pleasure  that  I  have  had  in  reading  over  these 
old  Greek  plays,  the  pleasure  that  comes  from 
the  contemplation  of  a  great  genius,  from  the 
sight  of  the  majesty  of  JEschylus,  his  lofty 
grandeur  of  conception,  his  profound  piety 

124 


POETRY  AND  POETS 

and  noble  morality,  his  stern  manliness  of 
thought,  his  unfaltering  faith  in  a  universe 
watched  over  by  an  unseen  power,  in  an  ever- 
lasting law  of  righteousness  and  justice,  which 
is  sure  at  last  to  punish  crime  and  reward 
virtue. 

An  equal  though  different  pleasure  has  also 
come  to  me  from  the  study  of  Euripides,  less 
sublime  than  JEschylus,  less  harmonious  than 
Sophocles,  yet  perhaps  more  akin  to  the  mod- 
ern mind,  by  the  larger  share  he  gives  to  the 
purely  human  elements  in  his  drama;  the 
changing  of  the  tragic  outcome  from  the  out- 
side Fate  to  the  inner  causes  due  to  the  con- 
flict of  warring  passions;  and  especially  the 
introduction  of  sexual  love  as  the  cause  of  the 
tragedy,  as  in  Hippolyte  and  Phaedra,  begin- 
ning that  long  line  of  famous  tragedies  in  all 
ages  and  lands,  from  Tristan  and  Iseult  of 
the  Middle  Ages  to  the  Francesca  da  Rimini 
of  Dante,  the  Romeo  and  Juliet  of  Shake- 
speare, and  the  Marguerite  of  Faust. 

Of  all  the  Greek  dramatists,  however, 
Sophocles  has  most  appealed  to  me,  not  only 
because  of  the  noble  characters,  such  as 
CEdipus,  blindly  suffering,  yet  purified  by 
suffering;  Antigone,  one  of  the  fairest  figures 
of  ancient  literature,  more  ready  to  join  in  lov- 

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A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

ing  than  in  hating,  and  preferring  death  to  the 
neglect  of  duty;  Neoptolemus,  the  ingenuous 
youth,  ready  to  fight  and  die  in  honoraible 
warfare,  yet  rebelling  against  victory  won  by 
deceit  and  falsehood ;  but  also  because  of  the 
spirit  of  the  plays — the  large,  serene  person- 
ality of  the  poet  himself,  whose  heart  was 
stirred  by  all  noble  things,  and  hated  all  that 
was  base  and  low,  who  prized  the  beauty  of 
noble  womanhood,  who  loved  with  lofty 
patriotism  his  own  Athens,  the  charm  of  which 
has  never  been  more  beautifully  expressed 
than  in  the  CEdipus  Colonus ;  his  sense  of  the 
infinite  pathos  and  pity  of  the  sadness  of  the 
human  race,  with  all  its  boasted  power,  where 
even  the  path  of  glory  leads  but  to  the  grave ; 
above  all,  his  belief  in  a  higher  spiritual  and 
moral  power,  which  watcher  over  the  affairs 
of  men,  apportioning  out  rewards  to  the 
wicked  and  righteous  alike,  and  which  it  is 
better  to  obey  even  to  the  death,  when  the  laws 
of  men  and  God  come  in  conflict. 

A  closer  appreciation,  one  based  on  direct 
contact  with  the  poet  in  his  own  tongue,  has 
come  to  me  in  the  case  of  the  Latin  poets.  Of 
Vergil  and  Lucretius  I  shall  speak  later.  Here 
I  may  say  a  few  brief  words  about  my  expe- 
rience with  the  minor  poets.  For  some  years 
126 


POETRY  AND  POETS 

now  I  have  made  it  a  practice  to  go  over  the 
poems  of  most  of  the  Latin  poets  contained 
in  the  well-known  Teubner's  school  edition, 
which,  with  their  excellent  introductions  and 
notes,  give  me  just  what  I  want  for  my  pur- 
pose, that  is,  a  general  conception  of  the  es- 
sential qualities  of  the  poets.  In  this  way 
I  have  come  to  have  a  better  idea  of  the  ex- 
traordinary virtuosity  of  Ovid,  his  brilliant 
fancy  and  powers  of  invention,  though  his 
lack  of  sincerity  and  of  genuine  feeling  pre- 
vents him  from  touching  my  heart  or  imagina- 
tion. The  reading  of  the  Metamorphoses  has, 
moreover,  made  me  familiar  with  a  multitude 
of  fables,  stories,  and  motifs  which  reappear 
countless  time  in  European  literature  since 
then — such  well-known  episodes  as  those  of 
Pyramus  and  Thisbe,  Hero  and  Leander,  Nar- 
cissus and  Echo,  Proserpina  and  Pluto,  and 
many  others.  It  has  thus  been  brought  home 
to  me  how  necessary  Ovid  is,  not  only  to  the 
student  of  Latin  literature,  but  to  the  student 
of  European  literature  as  a  whole. 

A  peculiar  charm  has  invested  for  me  the 
reading  of  the  great  elegiac  writers,  and  I 
never  tire  of  going  over  the  most  famous  ele- 
gies of  such  men  as  Tibullus,  with  his  deep 
power  of  feeling,  his  gentle  nature,  his  love  for 
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A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

Celia,  and  his  almost  modern  sentimental  love 
for  country  life,  for  the  rural  scenes  arid 
idyllic  surroundings  amid  which  he  had  been 
brought  up;  or  Propertius,  the  greatest  of  all 
Roman  elegiac  poets,  with  his  perfection  of 
form,  his  consummate  skill  in  adapting  to  the 
Latin  language  the  finest  elements  of  the 
Alexandrian  school,  especially  Callimachus; 
and,  in  spite  of  the  conventionality  of  all 
these  means  of  expression,  the  sincerity  of  his 
emotions,  which  go  straight  to  the  heart  of 
the  reader,  emotions  shown  especially  in  his 
love  for  Cynthia,  that  beautiful  example  of 
the  highborn  Roman  lady,  full  of  Greek  cul- 
ture herself,  a  poetess  and  singer,  whom  Pro- 
pertius  declares  he  loves  more  than  all  the 
riches  of  the  world,  and  who  is  to  him  at  the 
same  time  home,  father  and  mother.  Per- 
haps one  of  the  noblest  elegies  in  any  language 
is  that  famous  one  on  the  death  of  Cornelia, 
the  regina  elegiarum^  as  Scaliger  called  it, 
where  the  poet  shows  us  the  faithful  and  lov- 
ing wife  of  Paulus  gently  beseeching  her  hus- 
band not  to  mourn  over  her  death. 

But  I  have  experienced  a  still  deeper  per- 
"sonal    interest    in    Catullus,    "tenderest    of 
Roman  poets,''  whose  sad  life,  sincere  feel- 
ings, and  genuine  power  somehow  remind  me 
128 


POETRY  AND  POETS 

of  Frangois  Villon  in  the  fifteenth  century, 
and  Alfred  de  Musset  in  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury. My  first  real  acquaintance  with  him 
was  acquired  through  Rohde's  edition,  a  num- 
ber of  years  ago.  Since  then  I  have  read  him, 
at  least  in  part,  nearly  every  year,  and  I  have 
found  an  unequaled  fascination  and  charm 
in  the  few  brief  poems  where  he  tells  of  his 
love  for  a  bad  yet  beautiful  woman,  his  re- 
peated efforts  to  shake  off  the  chains  of  a 
shameful  passion,  his  piteous  appeals  to  the 
gods,  not,  indeed,  to  make  her  love  him  in 
return,  or — what  is  impossible — to  make  her 
pure,  but  to  give  him  strength  to  break  away 
himself.  I  know  of  no  more  touching  poetry  in 
any  language  than  the  two  lines  of  what  has 
been  called  the  shortest,  saddest,  and  most 
beautiful  poem  in  the  Latin  language, 

Odi  et  amo.    Quare  id  faciam,  fortasse  requiris? 
Nescio,  sed  fieri  sentio  et  excrucior. 

I  hate  and  love;  wherefore  do  I  that?  perchance  you  ask: 
I  know  not;  but  I  feel  'tis  so,  and  torment  fills  my  soul. 

Equally  beautiful  with  these  lines  are  those 
in  which  time  and  again  the  deep,  undying 
love  for  his  brother  breaks  forth,  whose  death 
in  a  distant  land  drew  from  Catullus  lines  of 
incomparable  pathos  and  beauty,  especially 
in  the  little  poem  of  only  ten  lines,  which  be- 

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A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

gins  with  the  words,  ^^Multas  per  gentes/^  and 
ends  with  the  wailing  tenderness  of  the  far-e- 
well  words,  "Atque  in  perpetuum^  frater^  ave 
atqiie  vale^^ — "Farewell  forever,  brother  mine; 
once  more  farewell."^ 

It  has  become  fashionable  in  later  years  to 
depreciate  the  genius  of  Horace,  one  well- 
known  English  critic,  for  instance,  declaring 
that  the  Odes  are  not  poetry,  but  vers  de 
socieUy  "bright,  scentless  flowers,"  a  shallow 
stream  flowing  through  a  "runnel  exquisitely 
smooth";  that  Horace  had  really  no  love  for 
nature,  or  anything  else  that  forms  the  subject 
of  his  poetry.  Yet  it  seems  to  me  that  this 
destructive  criticism  goes  too  far.  Men  have 
not  loved  for  naught  this  poet  of  ancient  Rome 
two  thousand  years  ago;  there  must  be  some- 
thing more  than  mere  superficial  technical 
skill  that  has  won  for  Horace  the  love  of  so 
many  of  the  world^s  distinguished  men;  that 
has  stamped  his  influence  on  a  whole  category 
of  lyrical  poetry  from  the  days  of  the  Renais- 
sance down  to  our  own  times.    As  for  my  own 

1 A  thousand  years  later  we  find  the  same  passionate  cry  over  the  death 
of  a  beloved  brother  in  Saint  Bernard:  "  We  loved  each  other  in  life;  why 
by  death  are  we  divided  ?  From  this  time  on  to  survive  thee  is  labor  and 
grief,  I  shall  but  live  only  in  bitterness  and  sorrow.  Flow  out,  flow  out 
ye  eager  tears!  since  he  who  would  have  hindered  you,  himself  has  passed 
away."  Similar  lines  have  been  written  in  our  own  times  by  Carducci 
and  Matthew  Arnold. 

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POETRY  AND  POETS 

personal  experience,  I  am  well  aware  of  his 
failings,  his  lack  of  deep  feeling,  whether  he 
treats  of  love  or  nature,  or  the  more  serious 
side  of  life.  I  know^  that,  although  a  reflective 
poet,  one  who  has  never  been  equaled  in  the  art 
of  weaving  poetry  and  philosophy  together 
in  unforgettable  lines,  yet  his  view  of  life 
is  one-sided;  that  his  philosophy  deals  al- 
together with  the  life  that  now  is,  and  as  for 
the  life  beyond  the  grave,  like  Autolycus,  he 
"sleeps  out  the  thought  of  it."  His  mind  is 
full  of  the  shortness  of  life,  a  thought  that 
he  repeats  countless  times.  Time  flies,  we 
are  not  sure  of  the  coming  day;  then  why 
should  we  waste  the  present  in  useless  cares? 
Let  us  enjoy  life  while  it  is  here — "let  us  eat, 
drink,  and  be  merry,  for  to-morrow  we  die.'' 
Yet  this  is  not  all.  There  is  genuine  profit 
to  be  found  in  the  doctrine,  repeated  many 
times  in  the  Odes  and  Satires,  that  wealth  and 
power  and  social  rank  cannot  keep  out  trouble 
and  unhappiness;  that  peace  and  inner  har- 
mony can  come  alone  from  that  spirit  of  con- 
tent which  takes,  without  complaint,  what- 
ever fortune  may  please  to  give.  Such  are 
some  of  the  things  in  Horace  that  I  have  found 
and  taken  pleasure  in.  He  does  not  appeal  to 
the   mystical,    dreamy,    sentimental    part    of 

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A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

me,  but,  rather,  to  the  sense  of  form,  and  the 
rather  envious  admiration  I  have  always  had 
of  the  cool-headed,  logical  common  sense  man 
of  the  world.  He  shares  in  this  respect  the 
feelings  I  have  had  for  Montaigne  and  Moliere. 
I  can  take  up  the  Odes  and  Satires  at  any 
time,  and  read  over  and  over  the  favorite  lines 
and  poems,  and  receive  every  time  a  new 
pleasure  and  profit.  For,  after  all,  for  a  man 
of  my  temperament,  apt  to  think  too  much 
over  the  mysteries  of  life,  it  is  a  good  thing 
to  come  out  into  the  broad  light  of  everyday 
life,  to  see  men  as  they  are,  with  their  foibles 
and  shortcomings,  worthy  of  our  pity,  if  not 
respect;  to  learn  the  lesson  of  content  with 
what  we  have,  of  indifference  to  wealth,  po- 
sition, and  power,  to  cultivate  the  spirit  of 
moderation  in  all  things,  to  enjoy  the  present 
moment,  not  to  worry  about  the  future,  to  be 
faithful  to  our  friends,  and,  finally,  to  see 
the  approach  of  the  inevitable  step  we  all  must 
take,  not  with  fear  and  trembling,  but  calmly 
and  peacefully,  thankful  for  the  life  that  has 
been  ours  so  long. 

My  fuller  knowledge  and  chief  reading  of 
the  French  and  Italian  poets  has  been  closely 
connected  with  my  teaching  and  writing. 
Every  year  it  has  been  my  pleasure,  as  well 

132 


POETRY  AND  POETS 

as  duty,  to  go  over  with  my  classes  the  writers 
of  these  two  great  nations,  to  point  out  their 
role  played  in  the  development  of  modem 
literature,  as  well  as  the  characteristic 
feature  of  the  writers  themselves.  For  some 
reason  or  other,  the  Italian  poets,  taken  as 
a  whole,  have  won  my  affection  most  after  the 
English.  Of  course  professional  interest  may 
have  something  to  do  with  this;  but  the 
musical  genius  of  the  language,  that  instinct 
of  beauty  innate  in  all  Italians,  the  leading 
role  played  in  the  development  of  modem 
civilization,  all  have  added  their  charm  to  the 
personal  talent  or  genius  of  the  individual 
poet. 

One  of  the  elements  of  my  interest  in  Italian 
poetry  has  been  more  or  less  intellectual,  the 
effort  to  trace  its  development,  from  the  first 
introduction  of  the  poetry  of  the  Troubadours 
into  Sicily  and  central  Italy,  where  it  laid  the 
foundation  of  Italian  poetry,  to  see  how  the 
conventional  traits  of  the  Provengal  poets 
became  spiritualized  in  Dante,  and  how  later 
Petrarch  made  known  to  all  Europe  the  true 
love-lyric  of  modern  times.  I  found  a  similar 
pleasure  in  seeing  how  the  old  French  Ro- 
mances were  transformed  into  the  Orlando 
Furioso  and  how  they  were  harmonized  by  the 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

extraordinary  skill  of  Ariosto  with  all  the 
fonns  of  classic  literature  and  art  of  the 
Renaissance. 

Ariosto  himself  I  have  enjoyed  for  his  won- 
derful gift  of  style,  for  his  inimitahle  power 
of  story-telling,  his  wise  and  shrewd  reflec- 
tions on  life,  which  mark  the  beginning  of 
each  canto,  his  quiet,  ironical  smile  while  re- 
lating some  prodigious  feat  of  arms;  his 
immortal  figure  of  Angelica,  type  of  the  Ren- 
aissance woman,  and  the  brilliant  combination 
of  beauty,  luxury,  and  joy  in  nature  and  all 
forms  of  art  that  make  the  Orlando  Furioso 
the  consummate  type  of  the  Renaissance  in 
Italy,  as  Spenser's  Faery  Queen  and  Shake- 
speare's plays  are  in  England. 

Tasso's  charm  for  me  has  consisted  in  the 
Vergilian  spirit  of  his  epic,  in  the  Romantic 
episodes  of  Clorinda  and  Tancred,  Sophronia 
and  Orlando,  the  spirit  of  melancholy  that 
hovers  over  the  whole  poem,  behind  which  I 
see  the  strange,  pathetic  figure  of  the  poet 
himself,  that  child  of  genius,  morbid,  super- 
stitious, half  insane,  too  delicate  and  sensitive 
for  the  rough  struggle  of  this  world,  yet  win- 
ning the  love  of  all  true  hearts  by  his  amiable 
disposition,  and,  above  all,  the  type  of  the 
modern  sentimental  poet. 

134 


POETRY  AND  POETS 

Very  different  is  the  picture  that  rises  in 
my  mind  as  I  think  of  Petrarch.  Here  the 
interest  is,  more  than  in  the  case  with  most 
poets,  a  double  one,  a  literary  and  a  personal 
one.  On  the  former  side  I  have  found  in  him 
the  continuation  of  the  Troubadours  and  the 
early  poets  of  Sicily  and  Tuscany,  the  unat- 
tainable master  in  the  art  of  love-song,  the 
highest  example  of  the  perfect  harmony  of 
subject-matter  and  form  in  modern  times ;  the 
founder  of  modern  lyrical  poetry,  the  fore- 
runner and  model  of  Spenser  and  Shakespeare^ 
Eonsard  and  Du  Bellay,  the  singer  of  the 
newly  discovered  beauty  of  the  world  of 
nature  and  art,  the  worshiper  of  woman  as  the 
expression  of  the  Ehvig  Weibliche^  not  now  de- 
scribed in  the  conventional  figures  of  the 
Courts  of  Love,  or  the  mystic  symbols  of 
Dante  and  Michael  Angelo,  but  woman  as 
she  is  in  herself,  lovely,  bewitching,  exerting 
an  unconquerable  fascination  as  she  moves  in 
and  out  of  the  brilliant  life  of  the  early  Ren- 
aissance— 

A  woman  not  too  fair  or  good 
For  human  nature's  daily  food. 

But,  more  than  all  this,  Petrarch  has  been 
to  me  the  first  modern  man,  the  one  who  gi  ve 
the  most  powerful  impulse  to  the  Renaissance, 

135 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

the  Columbus  of  modem  civilization,  as  he 
has  been  called,  whose  multiform  interest  in 
nature,  science,  geography,  classic  literature, 
archaeology,  and  criticism  opened  the  way  for 
all  the  various  elements  of  modem  civiliza- 
tion; who  combined  in  one  the  humanist, 
scholar,  archaeologist,  lover  of  nature,  patriot, 
traveler,  the  glory  of  his  own  country  and  of 
all  the  world. 

Beneath  all  this  I  have  found  a  still  deeper 
interest  in  the  inner  life  of  the  man,  the  first 
individual  as  compared  with  the  composite 
life  of  the  Middle  Ages;  with  his  tendency  to 
melancholy  and  pessimism,  the  forerunner  of 
that  brooding,  self-analyzing,  overwhelming 
and  paralyzing  Welt-schmerz  so  character- 
istic of  the  Romantic  poets  of  later  times; 
with  that  strange  contrast  in  his  nature,  his 
complex,  ever  self-contradictory,  subjective 
state  of  mind.  As  I  read  his  group  of  Sonnets 
and  Songs  to  Laura,  I  see  his  mind  constantly 
tossed  back  and  forth  between  his  love  for 
an  earthly  woman  and  his  conviction  that  he 
should  love  God  alone.  In  his  letters  I  see 
him,  Avhen  at  rest,  desiring  to  be  on  the  move ; 
at  Vaucluse  longing  to  travel;  when  travel- 
ing, yearning  for  the  rest  of  his  quiet  home. 
In  all  his  works  I  see  him  filled  with  a  sense 

136 


POETRY  AND  POETS 

of  the  vanity  of  all  human  things,  yet  con- 
sumed with  a  desire  for  earthly  glory;  simple 
in  his  tastes,  yet  spending  much  of  his  time 
in  the  courts  of  princes;  everywhere  and  in 
every  period  of  his  life  buffeted  by  the  vary- 
ing moods  of  his  spiritual  combat.  And, 
finally,  I  see  him  in  that  last  hour,  dying,  as 
he  had  wished,  while  engaged  in  reading  his 
beloved  books,  with  a  volume  of  Homer  clasped 
to  his  bosom : 

Dead  he  lay  among  his  books; 
The  peace  of  God  was  in  his  looks. 

Of  the  modern  Italian  poets  two  have  espe- 
cially won  my  admiration — Leopardi  and  Car- 
ducci.  My  attention  was  attracted  to  the 
former  when  a  boy,  by  an  article  in  the  Edin- 
burgh Review  by  W.  E.  Gladstone.  Since 
then  I  have  read  him  again  and  again,  full 
of  compassion  for  the  utter  depression  and 
sadness  of  his  life,  admiration  for  his  ex- 
traordinary knowledge  of  classic  literature,  his 
gift  of  expression  in  prose  and  especially  in 
poetry.  His  pessimism  was  not  superficial  and 
literary,  as  appears  to  be  the  case  often  in 
Byron,  Chateaubriand,  and  Lamartine,  but  is 
sincerely  profound,  crushing,  applied  not  only 
to  himself,  but  to  all  men,  a  spirit  summed  up 
in  the  words  of  Amiel :  ^^Noiis  sommes  tous  des 

137 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

condamnes  a  mortJ^  The  higkest  poetic  ex- 
pression of  the  sadness  of  life,  the  lachrymae 
rerum^  is  found  in  the  Night  Chant  of  a  No- 
madic Asiatic  Shepherd,  especially  in  the 
figure  of  an  old  man  stumbling  along,  tattered 
and  torn,  only  at  last 

Into  that  vast  abhorr'd  abyss  to  faU 
Headlong,  and  find  therein 
Oblivion  of  all. 

Giosue  Carducci,  scholar,  professor,  patriot, 
student  of  classic  and  Renaissance  literature, 
despiser  of  modern  sentimental  Romanticism, 
anti-clerical  and  religious  neo-pagan,  loyal 
upholder  of  the  Unity  of  Italy,  has  often 
seemed  to  me  the  greatest  poet  in  Europe, 
since  the  death  of  Tennyson  and  Browning. 
Beautiful  is  the  poem  Ruit  Rora,  the  Jieure 
exquise  of  the  twilight;  beautiful,  yet  full  of 
cosmic  sadness  the  Monte  Mario;  still  more 
beautiful  and  sadder  are  the  lines  on  the 
Certosa  at  Bologna,  when  he  thinks  of  the 
dead,  not  as  at  rest  after  life's  fitful  fever, 
not  as  among  the  innumerable  company  of 
just  men  made  perfect  in  the  presence  of  God 
and  the  angels,  but  lying  in  the  cold  and 
darkness  of  the  moldering  earth,  shut  out  for- 
ever from  the  beauty  and  sweetness  of  human 
life,  giving  voice  to  their  envy  of  those  happy 
138 


POETRY  AND  POETS 

mortals  still  living  in  the  world  of  sunlight 
above : 

Blessed  are  ye  who  walk  along  the  hillsides 
Flooded  with  the  warm  rays  of  the  golden  sun. 
Down  here  it  is  cold.    We  are  alone.    0,  love  ye  the  sun! 
Shine,  constant  star  of  Love,  on  the  life  which  passes 
away. 

I  do  not  think  I  can  speak  with  the  same 
personal  love  of  the  French  poets,  except 
MolierCj  and  a  few  others,  whom  I  shall  dis- 
cuss later.  And  yet  French  literature  has 
been  my  favorite  study,  chiefly,  however,  as 
I  have  already  said,  because  of  its  predomi- 
nating role  in  the  development  of ;  European 
literature.  Prom  the  purely  aesthetic  side, 
I  have  admired  the  classic  form,  psychology, 
and  tenderness  of  Eacine;  the  lofty  senti- 
ment of  Corneille;  the  perfect  form,  logic, 
common  sense,  and  dignity  of  Boileau;  the 
wit,  sprightly  humor,  perfect  mastery  of 
form,  and  the  savoir  vivre  of  La  Fontaine. 
In  the  field  of  French  poetry  much  of  my  read- 
ing has  been  intellectual,  but  what  I  have 
especially  enjoyed  in  the  poetry  of  other  na- 
tions, the  harmony  of  rhythm,  the  music 
of  verse,  I  find  more  or  less  wanting  to  them. 
There  are  some  exceptions  to  this,  however, 
such    as    Frangois   Villon,    in    the    fifteenth 

139 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

century — student,  drunkard,  debauchee,  thief, 
with  the  stain  of  blood  upon  his  hands,  and  yet 
whose  utter  sincerity,  poignant  pity  for  himself 
and  others,  his  sense  of  the  evanescence  of  all 
earthly  things,  are  summed  up  in  the  famous 
line,  ^^Mais  ou  sont  les  neiges  d^antanf^^ 
All  this  has  drawn  me,  with  the  triple  cord  of 
pity,  admiration,  and  love,  to  this  "Prince  of 
sweet  songs  made  out  of  tears  and  fire." 

Something  of  the  same  feeling  I  have  had 
for  Alfred  de  Musset  and  Paul  Verlaine,  four 
hundred  years  later;  they  too  were  sinful  and 
weak,  yet  likewise  with  a  strange  yearning  af- 
ter the  spiritual  life,  a  deep  remorse,  an  utter 
sincerity  in  all  they  wrote.  Other  French 
poets  whom  I  have  read  with  feelings  of  genu- 
ine enjoyment  are  the  melodious,  sad,  and 
deeply  religious  Lamartine,  the  titanic  Victor 
Hugo,  at  times  piling  Pelion  upon  Ossa,  in 
the  attempt  to  scale  Olympus,  and  then  writ- 
ing lines  and  passages  of  ineffable  poetry ;  the 
Parnassian  Le  Conte  de  Lisle,  w^ith  his  im- 
personal and  impeccable  Poemes  Antiques; 
the  philosopher  Sully  Prudhomme,  atheist, 
yet  in  love  with  the  ideal ;  aghast,  as  Tennyson 
was,  at  the  thought  of  infinite  space  and  time, 
at  the  hopeless  outcome  of  the  cosmic  drama, 

1  But  where  are  the  snows  of  yester-year? 
140 


POETRY  AND  POETS 

and  expressing  his  fears  in  the  same  mood  that 
Matthew  Arnold  had  when  writing  his  ^^Dover 
Beach/' 

In  general  I  have  felt  a  deeper  heart-love 
in  the  case  of  the  German  poets,  and  naturally 
so.  For  poetry  is  the  peculiar  province  of 
German  literature.  French  prose  is  unap- 
proached.  Neither  German  nor  English  has 
anything  to  compare  with  it.  But  in  poetry 
the  very  genius  of  the  French  language,  as  well 
as  the  fundamental  lack  of  the  metaphysical, 
transcendental  element  in  French  character, 
prevents  it  from  producing  poetry  such  as 
we  find  in  German  and  English.  The  German 
nature  is  deep  and  dark  and  tender ;  it  is  more 
inclined  to  sentimental  and  romantic  love, 
and  especially  to  the  deeper,  more  mystical  ele- 
ments of  religion.  Hence  it  comes  to  pass  that 
the  chief  glory  of  German  literature  is  in  its 
poetry.  No  sweeter  songs  in  the  world  can  be 
found  than  those  of  Heine  and  Goethe.  But 
even  in  the  naive  songs  of  the  people  we  find 
the  element  of  poetry  deeper  than  in  almost 
any  other  race,  containing  as  they  do  deep  re- 
flections on  the  pathos  as  well  as  the  joy  and 
beauty  of  life;  such  is  the  well-known  song, 
^'Freut  euch  des  Lebens/^  Annchen  von  Thau- 
rau,  and  especially  that  most  beautiful  of  all 

141 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

Germaii  songs — "Das  MailUfterl/^  with  its  un- 
forgettable refrain,  ^^Der  Mensch  hat  rtur 
einen  einzigen  Mai/^ 

My  experience  with  the  German  poets  began 
many  years  ago,  but  my  fuller  knowledge  of 
them  was  acquired  during  my  student  days  at 
the  University  of  Berlin.  The  famous  Reclam 
Universal'Bibliothek  furnished  me  with  easily 
acquired  editions  not  only  of  the  great  poets 
but  of  the  secondary  ones  as  well.  It  was  thus 
that  I  read  such  poets  as  Holty,  Holderlin, 
Lenau,  as  well  as  Uhland,  Leasing,  Heine, 
Goethe,  and  Schiller.  My  university  studies 
brought  me  especially  in  contact  with  the 
older  wi*iters  of  German  literature,  from  the 
Hildebrand's  Lied  down  to  Sebastian  Brant 
and  Hans  Sachs.  The  study  of  such  books  a*s 
the  Low  Saxon  Heliand,  Otfrid's  Evangelien- 
buch,  and  others,  was  largely  philological  and 
historical.  Genuine  pleasure  I  found  in  the 
Nibelungenlied,  under  the  guidance  of  Wil- 
helm  Scherer,  as  well  as  in  Gottfried  von 
Strasburg's  Tristan  und  Iseult;  Hartmann 
von  Aue's  Arme  Heinrich,  and  Wolfram  von 
Eschenbach's  noble  version  of  Chretien  de 
Troyes'  Parsifal,  in  which  the  French  tale  of 
chivalrous  romance  is  metamorphosed  into  a 
lofty  symbol  of  the  final  triumph  in  man  of 

142 


POETRY  AND  POETS 

the  spiritual  aspiration  over  mere  desire  for 
earthly  honor  and  glory.  Of  especial  charm 
were  and  have  ever  been  to  me  the  lyrical  poems 
of  Walther  von  der  Vogelweide.  As  a  boy  I 
had  read  of  him  in  Longfellow's  poem;  and 
when,  many  years  afterward,  I  sat  in  the  dark 
and  dingy  lecture  room  at  the  University  of 
Berlin,  listening  to  the  interpretation  of  Pro- 
fessor Roediger,  the  poetic  charm  of  the  old 
mediaeval  poet  shone  above  the  musty  sur- 
roundings and  the  learned  philological  and 
historical  explanation  of  the  Herr  Professor. 
I  have  read  these  poems,  many  of  them  again 
and  again  since  then,  with  ever-increasing 
pleasure,  a  pleasure  strangely  enough  far 
greater  than  I  have  had  in  the  poetry  of  the 
Troubadours,  whom  the  German  poet  followed 
so  closely  in  theme  and  form.  But  the  conven- 
tional motif  of  the  Provencal  poets  became  in 
the  hands  of  their  German  followers  what  the 
Perceval  of  Chretien  de  Troyes  became  in  the 
hands  of  Wolfram  von  Eschenbach;  and  in 
reading  Walther  von  der  Vogelweide  I  have 
been  conscious  of  a  personality  full  of  genuine 
love  for  nature  and  virtuous  womanhood,  of 
high  political  and  religious  ideals,  and,  as  the 
creeping  steps  of  age  approach  him,  touched 
with  a  sense  of  the  unreality  of  life,  as  genuine 

143 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

and  deep  as  that  of  Prospero  in  The  Tempest 
and  crying  out  in  his  last  poem, 

"Ow^  war  sint  verswunden  alliu  mlniu  jar! 
1st  mir  min  leben  getroumet,  oder  ist  ez  war?"^ 

While  studying  these  older  writers  at  the 
university  I  did  not  neglect  the  modern  poets, 
steeped  myself  in  Lessing's  plays,  Heine's 
wonderful  lyrics,  and  read  Goethe  and  Schil- 
ler. 

Poets  are  like  ordinary  men  in  the  variety 
of  their  character  and  personality.  Some  we 
admire  but  cannot  love,  while  others  inspire 
in  us  not  only  feelings  of  admiration,  but  an 
almost  personal  affection  as  well.  The  study 
of  those  whose  view  of  life  is  cynical  or  pes- 
simistic leaves  us  saddened  and  dejected, 
while  others  lift  us  above  the  cares  and  sor- 
rows of  the  everyday  world  to  a  higher,  se- 
rener  atmosphere.  Among  the  latter  Schiller 
especially  appeals  to  me;  and  ^Vhen  in  the 
sessions  of  sweet,  silent  thought'^  I  meditate 
on  the  great  writers  it  has  been  my  good  for- 
tune to  know,  this  is  the  picture  that  rises  in 
my  mind  of  the  outer  and  the  inner  life  of  this 
lovable  man  and  inspiring  poet. 

I  see  his  early  life  in  the  little  village  of 

1  Alas!  where  have  all  my  years  disappeared?     Is  my  life  a  dream  or 
is  it  true? 

144 


POETRY  AND  POETS 

Marbach,  where  he  was  born  in  1759;  I  see 
him  surrounded  by  the  various  members  of  his 
family — his  father,  strong,  upright,  religious, 
full  of  ambition  for  himself  and  his  son;  his 
sister  Christophine,  who  became  his  constant 
companion  through  all  the  daj^s  of  his  youth ; 
but  especially  his  mother,  a  poet  by  nature  if 
not  in  actual  words,  full  of  deep  religion, 
climbing  with  her  children  on  Easter  Day  a 
near-by  hill  and  there  telling  them  the  story 
of  the  resurrection  of  Christ,  the  journey  to 
Emmaus,  with  such  power  to  touch  their  child- 
ish hearts  that  all  fell  to  their  knees,  praying 
with  tears  in  their  eyes  to  the  risen  Saviour. 
I  see  him  in  the  military  school  at  Stuttgart, 
ruled  as  with  a  rod  of  iron  by  the  Duke,  his 
master,  the  petty  tyrant  of  the  little  German 
principality.  I  see  his  unhappiness,  his  ef- 
forts to  express  himself  in  poetry,  the  pro- 
hibition of  the  Duke,  the  representation  of 
his  first  drama,  the  Robbers,  that  famous  cry  of 
revolt  against  the  trammels  of  formal  society ; 
I  see  the  reprimand  he  received,  and,  finally, 
his  fiight  from  his  native  land.  I  see  the  long 
years  that  follow,  his  beautiful  friendship  with 
Goethe,  his  professorship  at  Jena,  surrounded 
by  envious  colleagues,  yet  winning  the  ad- 
miration, respect,  and  love  of  the  best  minds 

145 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

among  the  students  by  the  high  plane  on  which 
he  gave  his  lectures  on  universal  history, 
drawing  them  to  him  by  his  inspiring  ideas, 
infusing  life  into  the  dry  facts  of  history, 
and,  above  all,  in  the  words  of  his  recent  biog- 
rapher, giving  ^^his  young  friends  to  take  out 
into  life  with  them  what  is  more  influential 
than  any  learned  instruction,  and  what  experi- 
ence shows  is  alone  remembered  with  grati- 
tude— the  memory  of  a  great,  pure-minded 
personality,  a  man  indeed.'' 

And,  finally,  I  see  him  suddenly  stricken 
with  that  illness  which  left  him  an  invalid 
for  life,  with  the  shadow  of  the  unknown  hov- 
ering above  him,  until  that  beautiful  death 
scene,  when,  being  asked  how  he  felt,  he  an- 
swered, "Better  and  better,  happier  and  hap- 
pier!'' and,  asking  to  have  his  bed  moved  to 
the  window,  gazed  long  and  deeply  at  the 
setting  sun,  and  so  bade  farewell  to  this  world. 

I  see  the  gradual  development  of  his  inner 
life,  surely  one  of  the  most  beautiful  in  the  an- 
nals of  literature:  the  deep  religious  instinct 
inherited  and  fostered  by  his  mother;  his 
belief  that  joy  is  the  end  of  all  things,  the 
creative  power  of  nature,  and  the  goal  toward 
which  the  whole  universe  is  moving;  that  God 
isi  infinite  love,  and   the  more  we  love  the 

146 


POETRY  AND  POETS 

nearer  we  come  to  him.  I  see  his  passionate 
love  for  study,  for  philosophy  and  history,  and 
especially  for  the  works  of  the  great  poets, 
whether  in  ancient  or  modem  times.  I  see  his 
own  creations,  the  Robbers  of  his  days  of 
"storm  and  stress,"  the  calmer  dramas  of  Don 
Carlos,  Maria  Stuart,  William  Tell,  his  his- 
torical and  philosophical  essays.  But  above 
all  I  see  the  varied  forms  of  his  lyrical  poetry, 
wherein  is  reflected  the  personality  of  one  "to 
whom  life  was  an  unending  opportunity  for 
penetrating  into  the  essence  of  things,  for  find- 
ing unity  back  of  contrast,"  and  who  ever 
sought  to  realize  the  prayer  of  Socrates,  "Give 
me  beauty  in  the  inward  soul,  and  may  the 
outer  and  the  inner  man  be  at  one."  I  see 
him  illustrating  in  his  own  life  the  doctrine 
he  teaches  himself,  that  "the  man  who  wants 
to  be  himself,  who  strives  for  inner  harmony, 
must  be  a  stranger  to  his  surroundings,  a 
stranger  to  his  time;  he  must  remove  himself 
from  the  belittling  ambitions  of  the  multi- 
tude, must  scorn  all  participation  in  the  quest 
for  outward  success,  must  fill  himself  with 
what  the  best  and  finest  of  all  ages  have 
dreamed  and  accomplished ;  he  must  dwell  in 
the  idea  of  the  beautiful." 

It  is  this  worship  of  the  beautiful  and  the 
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A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

ideal  that  has  made  Schiller  so  beloved  by  his 
fellow  countrymen,  and  the  type  of  that  aspi- 
ration of  man  to>ward  something  far  removed 
from  the  shreds  and  patches,  the  sorrows  and 
crimes  of  the  actual  world  in  which  we  live. 
All  these  things  have  been  summed  up  in  that 
most  wonderful  of  all  poems  of  modern  times, 
The  Ideal  and  Life,  a  poem  in  which  phi- 
losophy and  poetry  are  one,  a  poem  which  has 
taken  possession  forever  of  the  human  heart, 
and  which  illustrates  more  than  any  other  the 
words  of  Emerson :  ^^So  when  the  soul  of  the 
poet  has  come  to  ripeness  of  thought,  she  de- 
taches and  sends  away  from  it  poems  or  songs, 
a  fearless,  sleepless,  deathless  progeny,  which 
is  not  exposed  to  the  accidents  of  the  weary 
kingdom  of  time;  a  fearless,  vivacious  off- 
spring, clad  with  wings,  which  carry  them 
fast  and  far  and  infix  them  irrecoverably  into 
the  hearts  of  men.  These  wings  are  the 
beauty  of  the  poet's  soul." 

In  this  poem  we  see  the  double  realm  of  the 
material  and  the  spiritual  worlds.  In  the 
former  is  the  body,  subject  to  discord,  sin, 
suffering  and  final  death.  In  the  latter  is  the 
homeland  of  the  soul  and  the  dwelling-place  of 
God  himself,  full  of  all  beauty  and  perfection, 
whose  desire  to  express  his  own  infinite  love 

148 


POETRY  AND  POETS 

shows  itself  in  the  universe  at  large.  And 
man,  though  banished  for  a  time  in  the  king- 
dom of  this  world,  has  a  soul  immortal,  which 
may  share  the  perfection  of  God  himself. 

Above  the  flux  and  flow  of  the  material  uni- 
verse is  the  infinite  unity  of  the  Divina  Time 
and  space  are  mere  states  of  the  mind;  the 
only  real  things  are  God  and  the  soul.  In 
the  beautiful  words  of  Hegel,  who  did  so  much 
to  form  the  inner  life  of  Schiller:  "All  that 
awakens  doubt  and  perplexity,  all  sorrow  and 
care,  all  limited  interests  of  flnitude,  we  leave 
behind  us  on  the  banks  and  the  shoals  of  time. 
And  as  on  the  summit  of  a  mountain,  removed 
from  all  the  hard  distinctions  of  detail,  w^e 
calmly  overlook  the  landscape,  so  by  religion 
we  are  lifted  above  all  obstructions  of  flnitude. 
It  is  in  this  native  land  of  the  spirit  that  the 
waters  of  oblivion  flow,  from  which  it  is  given 
to  Psyche  to  drink  and  forget  her  sorrows; 
for  here  the  darkness  of  life  becomes  a  trans- 
parent dream-image  through  which  the  light 
of  eternity  shines  in  upon  us.'' 

And  this  is  the  great  service  that  Schiller 
has  bestowed  on  mankind — to  turn  their 
eyes  from  the  real  to  the  ideal,  from  the  ma- 
terial to  the  spiritual,  from  time  to  eternity. 
We  are  all  of  us  surrounded  by  sadness,  sor- 

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A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

row,  and  affliction;  on  all  sides  we  see  men 
and  women  afflicted  in  body,  sick  in  mind,  and 
troubled  in  spirit.  Wlien  these  things  oppress 
me  more  than  they  ought,  I  turn  to  Schiller, 
and  read  the  lines  of  his  wonderful  poem,  and 
listen  as  he  speaks  to  me:  "O  cast  away  the 
fret  and  worry  of  this  earthly  life,  rise  on  the 
wings  of  beauty  to  the  realm  of  the  ideal. 
And  when  you  have  issued  forth  from  the 
trammels  of  time  and  sense  into  the  freedom 
of  the  kingdom  of  thought,  lo!  the  fear  and 
doubt  will  pass  away'' ; 

For  within  those  fair,  celestial  regions. 
Guarded  by  the  bright,  angelic  legions. 

Felt  no  more  is  sorrow's  bitter  blast. 
There  the  soul  from  joy  no  pain  shall  sever. 
There  all  tears  shall  pass  away  forever, 

There  the  spirit  finds  its  home  at  last. 
Lovely  as  the  rainbow  iridescent. 

On  the  dark  cloud's  dewy  breast. 
Gleam  through  veil  of  sorrow  evanescent 

Azure  skies  of  endless  rest. 

Of  all  the  poets,  however,  my  acquaintance 
with  those  of  England  and  America  has  been 
earlier,  more  spontaneous,  and  more  continu- 
ous. It  is  from  them  that  I  have  stored  my 
mind  with  the  largest  number  of  quotations, 
lines,  and  passages,  which  have  given  me  pleas- 
ure through  all  the  years  that  have  passed 

150 


POETRY  AND  POETS 

since  then.  I  do  not  know  when  I  first  began 
to  read  them.  Some  came  to  me  in  the  days 
of  early  youth,  others  only  later.  It  was 
largely  a  matter  of  chance.  A  volume  of 
poetry  would  fall  into  my  hands;  I  would 
come  across  one  in  the  library.  Many  com- 
paratively unread  poets  to-day  became  thus 
the  companions  of  my  youth,  such,  for  in- 
stance, as  Akenside,  Bloomfield,  Collins, 
Beattie,  Young,  Thomson's  Seasons  and  Pol- 
lok's  Course  of  Time.  I  remember  still  the 
vivid  impression  that  the  description  of  "The 
Last  Judgment"  in  Pollok  made  on  my  youth- 
ful mind,  and  the  dreams  it  produced  the 
night  I  finished  it. 

These  were  the  days  when  I  read  more 
eagerly,  when  mere  narration  had  power  over 
my  mind  more  than  it  has  now;  hence  the 
poetic  tales  of  Byron  and  Sir  Walter  Scott 
were  eagerly  devoured.  Byron  particularly 
appealed  to  my  favorite  pastime  of  learning 
lines,  especially  his  Childe  Harold. 

Among  these  favorites  of  my  early  years 
were  Chaucer's  Canterbury  Tales,  especially 
The  Knight's  Tale,  and  even  at  that  early 
period  I  was  impressed  with  the  kindly  spirit, 
gentle  humor,  love  for  books,  nature,  and  men 
of  the  poet  whose  works  have  been  called  a 

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A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

well  of  English  undefiled.  Spenser's  Faery 
Queen  I  read  somewhat  laboriously,  it  must  be 
confessed,  for  it  was  only  later  that  my  studies 
in  comparative  literature,  and  my  desire  to 
get  a  rounded-out  view  of  all  English  litera- 
ture, led  me  to  re-read  him  in  order  to  trace  the 
influence  of  mediseval  French  romances  and 
Ariosto  and  Tasso  in  the  Faery  Queen,  the 
Eoman  de  Reynard,  Mother  Hubbard's  Tales, 
and  the  classic  eclogues  in  the  Shepherd's 
Calendar.  To-day  I  find  pleasure  in  Spenser's 
richness  of  rime  and  melody,  beautiful  scenes, 
poetic  language.  Yet,  in  general,  he  is  too  far 
away  from  actual  life  to  draw  me  to  him  often. 
This  is  not  true,  however,  of  what  has  seemed 
to  me  one  of  the  most  beautiful  poems  in 
English  literature,  the  Epithalamium,  nearly 
all  of  which  I  learned  by  heart  years  ago,  and 
remember  to  this  day. 

Form,  clearness,  epigrammatic  statement, 
extraordinary  command  over  the  decasyllabic 
rimed  couplet,  early  led  me  to  admire — not 
love — Pope's  Essay  on  Man,  Rape  of  the 
Lock,  Abelard  and  Heloise,  all  of  which 
offered  exercise  to  my  memory  and  love  for 
quotable  lines.  Something  of  the  same  may 
be  said  for  Dryden,  and  Cowper,  whose  sad 
life  lends  pathetic  interest  to  his  poetry,  while 

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POETRY  AND  POETS 

Johnson's  famous  paraphrase  of  Juvenal's 
Ninth  Satire,  on  the  Vanity  of  Human  Wishes, 
was  largely  learned  by  heart. 

Especial  favorites  in  my  boyhood  days  were 
Longfellow,  Tennyson,  and,  strangely  enough, 
Swinburne.  I  read  practically  all  the  works 
of  these  poets  through.  The  last-mentioned 
has  ceased  to  attract  me  very  much  of  late 
years,  and  even  Longfellow  and  Tennyson  do 
not  occupy  the  first  place  in  my  heart's  affec- 
tion as  they  did  onca  But  in  those  early  days 
of  my  sentimental  youth  I  never  tired  of  read- 
ing them. 

Perhaps  of  all  the  poets  none  took  posses- 
sion so  completely  of  my  heart  and  fancy  in 
early  youth  as  Tennyson.  I  read  practically 
every  poem  he  had  written  up  to  that  time. 
I  steeped  myself  in  the  atmosphere  of  The 
Princess,  Locksley  Hall,  Maud,  Lady  of  Shal- 
ott.  Sir  Galahad,  and  all  the  rest  that  are  en- 
shrined in  the  inner  chamber  of  my  memory. 
Especially  was  I  drawn  to  the  Idylls  of  the 
King,  long  before  my  study  of  comparative 
literature  and  Old  French  gave  them  a  new 
meaning.  In  those  early  days  it  was  not 
scholarship  that  I  sought ;  I  was  simply  buried 
in  the  poetic  spirit,  carried  away  to  the  land 
of  romance,  where  I  seemed 

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A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

to  hear 
The  great  bell  tolling  far  and  near; 
The  odd,  unknown  enchanted  gong. 
That  on  the  road  hales  men  along; 
That  lures  the  vessel  from  a  star; 
That  from  the  mountain  calls  afar; 
And  with  a  still  aerial  sound, 
Makes  all  the  earth  enchanted  ground. 

I  almost  envy  myself  the  pleasure  of  those 
days  in  the  reading  of  Tennyson,  with  the 
knightly  figures  that  stalked  through  the  pages 
— Sir  Galahad,  whose  strength  was  as  the 
strength  of  ten;  Sir  Launcelot  of  the  Lake, 
with  the  beautiful  symbol  of  the  Holy  Grail, 
and,  above  all,  the  tender,  loving,  unhappy 
Elaine,  as  she  lay  on  the  boat,  sailing  slowly 
up  the  river,  to  the  palace  of  the  king. 

Yet  as  I  have  grown  older  the  supremacy 
of  Tennyson  has  given  way  somewhat  to  other 
poets — Shakespeare,  Dante,  even  Browning. 
To-day  he  means  to  me  the  maker  of  musical 
verse,  the  writer  of  exquisite  language,  the 
most  finished  of  modern  authors,  resembling 
in  this  respect  Vergil,  whom  he  so  much  loved. 
His  works  are  full  of  beautiful  descriptions, 
unsurpassed  music  of  verse,  language  of  a 
consummate  artist;  they  are  full  of  the  glam- 
our of  chivalry,  the  vague,  ineffable  charm 
which  hovers  over  The  Holy  Grail  and  The 

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POETRY  AND  POETS 

Round  Table.  His  songs  are  exquisite,  for 
his  real  genius  is  rather  lyrical  than  epic  or 
dramatic,  and  even  the  In  Memoriam  is  only 
one  long  series  of  lyrical  expressions,  express- 
ing various  states  of  mind,  in  the  presence  of 
suffering  and  death,  and  stirred  by  the  fears 
and  doubts  aroused  by  the  wonderful  dis- 
coveries of  science  in  the  early  nineteenth 
century. 

Another  one  of  my  youthful  idols  was  Keats, 
with  his  wonderful  magic  of  style  and  haunt- 
ing sense  of  beauty,  and  whose  pathetic  and 
tragic  story  added  a  deeper  and  a  darker  strain 
to  the  charm  of  his  poetry.  I  learned  by  heart 
most  of  the  Ode  to  a  Grecian  Urn,  Sonnet 
on  the  First  Opening  of  Chapman's  Homer, 
parts  of  the  Eve  of  St.  Agnes,  and  that  in- 
comparable last  sonnet  of  his,  beginning, 
^^Bright  star,  would  I  were  steadfast  as  thou 
art." 

Other  favorites  of  my  youth  were  Gold- 
smith, whose  Traveler  and  Deserted  Vil- 
lage I  read  over  and  over  again ;  Shelley,  with 
his  ethereal  lyrics,  which  attracted  me  more 
than  his  more  philosophical  longer  poems; 
and  certain  poems  of  Coleridge,  Bums,  and 
Moore. 

In  later  times  came  the  philosophical  poets, 

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A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGKAPHY 

such  as  Clough,  Arnold,  and  Wordsworth. 
The  element  of  melancholy,  religious  ques- 
tioning, passionate  love  for  and  communion 
with  nature  seen  in  Matthew  Arnold  has 
given  him  a  strong  hold  upon  my  later  life. 
The  more  sober  reflections  that  come  with 
middle  age,  the  interest  in  the  great  questions 
of  the  whence  and  whither  and  why  of  life, 
have  lent  to  Arnold's  poetry  a  charm  quite 
different  from  that  spoken  of  above.  It  is 
not  in  felicity  of  language  or  music  of  form, 
nor  in  romantic  fancies  or  touches  of  love, 
but,  rather,  in  the  deep  questions  which  men 
had  to  face  in  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  when  science  had  destroyed  forever 
the  framework  of  the  universe  which  lay  be- 
hind the  old  theology,  and  shotwed  the  vast 
spaces  of  the  new  universe,  inhabited  by 
countless  worlds,  moving  down  the  ages  to- 
ward— what? — annihilation  or  perfection  ? 
This  thought,  which  haunted  Tennyson  all  his 
life,  and  which  is  fought  out,  in  the  In  Me- 
moriam,  to  a  more  or  less  confident  faith, 
left  Matthew  Arnold  without  God  and  without 
hope  in  the  world.  There  is  nothing  sadder 
in  modern  literature  than  the  elegiac  spirit 
of  his  poetry,  a  spirit  which,  nevertheless, 
makes  up  its  chief  charm ;  for  they  are  really 

156 


POETRY  AND  POETS 

elegies  lamenting  not  only  the  loss  of  a  be- 
loved friend,  or  the  disappearance  of  love,  but 
the  passing  away  forever  of  faith  in  God, 
Christ,  and  the  immortality  of  the  soul.  Not 
perfection,  but  degeneracy,  is  the  fate  of  man- 
kind, as  he  shows  in  his  Future,  where  we 
read  that 

The  tract  which  the  river  of  Time 
Now  flows  through  with  us  is  the  plain. 

Age  is  not  the  time  of  calm  or  hope,  of  peace- 
fully awaiting  the  entrance  to  a  larger  life 
through  the  gate  of  death,  but  something  from 
which  the  glory  has  departed  never  to  return. 
The  whole  world  itself,  nature  in  all  its  won- 
derful beauty,  is  nothing  but  an  illusion.  I 
sometimes  think  that  the  saddest  poem  in  the 
English  language  is  Dover  Beach  with  its 
despairing  last  lines. 

Fortunately,  the  last  word  in  English  litera- 
ture has  not  been  spoken  by  Matthew  Arnold. 
Inclined,  it  may  be,  myself  too  much  to  the 
melancholy  phase  of  life,  I  read,  perhaps  more 
than  was  good  for  me,  such  poets  as  Leopardi 
and  Matthew  Arnold.  I  found  an  antidote  in 
the  most  robust,  cheerful,  and  deepest  thinker 
of  modern  poets,  Robert  Browning.  Brown- 
ing was  not  one  of  my  boyhood  poets,  nor  did 
he  share  with  Longfellow  and  Tennyson  that 

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A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

romantic,  sentimental  worship  of  my  boyish 
heart.  It  was  not  until  I  went  to  college  that 
I  really  began  to  know  him.  Two  things  es- 
pecially stand  out  in  my  memory  in  regard 
to  him :  one  was  reading  the  essay  by  Edward 
Dowden  on  Tennyson  and  Browning,  which 
made  a  deep  impression  on  me  and  sent  me  to 
the  study  of  Browning  in  a  serious  way ;  the 
other  was  my  first  reading  of  the  Blot  in  the 
'Scutcheon.  This  I  read,  sitting  up  nearly 
all  night,  and  finishing  it  in  a  deep  spirit 
of  poetic  ecstasy.  It  was  the  same  experi- 
ence as  I  had  had  with  Dante,  when  only 
sixteen  years  old,  reading  at  midnight  the 
last  paragraph  of  the  Vita  Nuova;  or  with 
Shakespeare,  reading  Othello,  Julius  Csesar, 
or  Hamlet.  From  that  time  I  date  my  real 
appreciation  of  Browning.  Not  that  I  have 
read  with  unmixed  pleasure  all  that  he  wrote. 
Sensitive  to  form  as  I  have  always  been, 
to  music  of  verse,  and  clear  expression,  the 
peculiarities  of  Browning's  genius  as  seen 
in  many  of  his  poems  have  produced  a  sense 
of  discord  in  the  admiration  I  have  felt  for 
him.  What  I  have  felt  in  the  highest  degree 
is  the  spirit  of  all  he  wrote:  his  philosophy  of 
life,  his  spiritual  aspiration,  his  tenderness 
for  all  men  and  women — even  the  fallen — his 

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POETRY  AND  POETS 

insistence  on  love  as  the  one  thing  that  alone 
can  ennoble  character,  can  clothe  the  dark 
mysteries  of  fate  and  the  universe  with  a 
garment  of  hope  and  trust;  above  all,  his  vir- 
ility, his  unbounded  faith  in  God,  and  the 
ultimate  goal  of  the  soul;  his  contempt  for 
those  who  fear  death,  meeting  himself  the  in- 
evitable step  with  the  spirit  of  a  hero  on  the 
field  of  battle.  All  this  has  drawn  me  very 
strongly  to  Browning.  I  have  felt  as  strongly 
as  any  others  his  well-known  failings:  his 
harsh  lines,  lack  of  melody  and  grace  in  verse, 
his  strange,  outlandish  words,  his  oftentimes 
obscurity  of  thought  and  phrase.  Yet  in  later 
years  he  has  grown  more  and  more  in  my  af- 
fection ;  and  more  and  more  I  feel  his  creative 
power,  his  deeper  and  broader  reflections  on 
the  essential  elements  of  human  life,  his  man- 
liness of  thought,  and,  above  all,  his  spiritual 
power. 

But  more  than  all  else,  I  have  found  in  his 
poetry  a  help  and  comfort,  an  antidote  to  the 
moods  of  sadness  that  come  upon  all  men  at 
times,  especially  at  the  apparent  outcome  of 
the  cosmic  process  as  revealed  by  modern 
science.  This  cosmic  fear,  or  terror,  brought 
about  by  modern  science,  shows  itself  in  va- 
rious poets  of  the  nineteenth  century,  espe- 

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A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

cially  in  Tennyson.  The  latter^  as  Mr.  Lyall 
says,  shows  "in  his  earlier  writings  the  shadow 
of  despondency  and  gloom,  a  sense  of  incom- 
pleteness and  failure  of  life,  darkened  by 
meditation  on  the  condition  and  prospects  of 
the  human  race.  The  tremendous  expansion 
of  scientific  record  seems  to  have  affected  him 
like  a  sentence  of  inflexible  predestination, 
oyershadowing  his  delight  in  the  glamour  of 
the  world  by  the  foreknowledge  of  inevitable 
doom.  The  vision  of  the  world,  dark  with 
grief  and  graves,  of  human  energy  squandered 
on  a  planet  passing  from  fire  to  frost,  evi- 
dently fascinated  his  mind  and  filled  it  with 
dismay."  To  me  it  seems  that  the  mind  of 
Tennyson  never  fully  shook  itself  loose  from 
the  dismal  fear;  the  In  Memoriam  is  a  long- 
drawn-out  version  of  Hamlet's  doubt,  "To  be, 
or  not  to  be.''  His  faith  was  not  robust,  and 
even  in  his  last  poem  still  echoes  a  dim  fear 
lest  his  hopes  may  not  be  true. 

It  is  the  one  great  thing  for  me  to  find  in 
Browning  an  antidote  for  all  these  dismal 
fears,  these  specters  of  the  cosmic  death  and 
desolation.  He  has  cheered  and  braced  me 
with  his  unconquerable  spiritual  optimism, 
his  robust  faith  in  the  ultimate  welfare  of 
the  world,  his  contempt  for  despondency  and 

160 


POETRY  AND  POETS 

cowardice,  his  conviction  that  God  is  in 
heaven,  and  hence  "alPs  right  with  the  world" ; 
that  there  is  a  witness  to  God's  presence  in 
the  soul  of  man,  that  "assurance  and  illumina- 
tion come  to  those  w^ho  follow  their  noblest 
instincts  and  never  look  back.'' 

This  optimism  of  his  shows  itself  in  his 
view  of  love,  which  is  not  an  evil,  or  the  mere 
exaggeration  of  sex-instinct,  but  the  highest 
thing  in  life,  which  is  "incompatible  with  false- 
hood and  purifies  and  assimilates  all  other 
passions  to  itself";  which  leads  a  man  to  all 
that  is  noble  and  true  and  good,  and  finally; 
to  God  himself. 

His  optimism  shows  itself  especially  in  his 
belief  in  a  life  beyond  the  grave,  where  all 
broken  "fragments  shall  be  made  whole,  all 
problems  solved." 

It  is  a  brave  and  inspiring  world  that  we 
see  as  we  read  Browning's  works.  He  seems 
to  say  to  us  all:  Don't  be  afraid  of  it;  there 
it  is  lying  before  you,  full  of  hard  work,  of 
long  waiting  for  success,  oftentimes  of  failure 
and  defeat.  Yet  also  full  of  many  beautiful 
things — autumn's  sun  shining  on  the  ripened 
sheaves ;  love  who  "keepeth  his  vigil  on  the  soft 
cheeks  of  the  maiden";  high-hearted  hopes, 
sympathy,  kindness,  heroic  deeds,  and  a  thou- 
161 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

sand  other  things  that  make  this  life  of  ours, 
not  a  place  to  crawl  through  with  whining, 
but  to  go  through  like  a  man,  taking  fortune's 
favors  or  her  buffets  with  equal  thanks — 

Life  that  dares  send 

A  challenge  to  its  end 

And  when  it  comes,  say,  "Welcome,  friend." 

And  as  Browning  wrote  so  he  lived  and  died 

— bravely  fighting  his  w^ay  through   all   the 

obstacles  and  troubles  that  beset  his  path,  and 

when  assailed  by  discouragement,  crying  out, 

with  Paracelsus, 

"I  go  to  prove  my  soul! 
I  see  my  way  as  birds  their  trackless  way. 

If  I  stoop 
Into  a  dark  tremendous  sea  of  cloud. 
It  is  but  for  a  time;  I  press  God's  lamp 
Close  to  my  breast;  its  splendor,  soon  or  late. 
Will  pierce  the  gloom:  I  shall  emerge  one  day." 

And,  finally,  as  he  himself  was  about  to  pass 
from  this  life  to  the  next,  writing  that  last 
poem  of  his,  which,  as  Stopford  Brooke  says, 
is  like  "the  last  look  of  the  Phoenix  to  the  sun, 
before  the  sun  lights  the  odorous  pyre  from 
which  the  new-created  bird  will  spring." 

Another  poet  whose  real  acquaintance  I 
made  only  in  college  is  Wordsworth.  Of 
course  I  had  known  already  some  of  the  com- 

163 


POETRY  AND  POETS 

monest  of  those  poems  which,  to  many  people, 
sum  up  Wordsworth's  poetic  work.  But  when 
I  began  to  study  him  in  all  the  varieties  of  his 
work,  not  excluding  the  Excursion  and  the 
biographical  poems;  when  I  caught  a  glimpse 
of  his  spiritual  power,  his  deep  love  for  hu- 
manity, and,  above  all,  his  wonderful  insight 
into  nature,  then  he  took  hold  upon  my  heart 
with  a  power  that  has  only  grown  in  all  these 
later  years.  Not  that,  for  me,  Wordsworth 
can  be  placed  beside  the  three  or  four  great 
world  writers.  I  can  recognize  his  limita- 
tions, his  commonplaceness  in  many  parts  of 
his  poetry,  and  yet  in  certain  moods  of  mine, 
in  certain  metaphysical  experiences,  Words- 
worth affects  me  as  scarcely  any  other  poet 
ever  has  done.  Shakespeare,  Dante,  Homer 
are  greater  in  their  universal  power  and 
genius,  in  their  influence  on  the  world  of  lit- 
erature at  large.  I  find  in  them  unfailing 
subjects  for  thought,  varied  kinds  of  literary 
and  intellectual  enjoyment,  uplift  in  spirit; 
but  the  sense  of  universal  beauty,  of  a  spirit 
pervading  all  the  world  of  nature,  the  subtle 
feeling  that  comes  to  me  at  times  as  if  all 
inanimate  things  had  a  deep  meaning,  that  I 
can  almost  understand — this  phase  of  my  per- 
sonal experience  finds  delight  in  Wordsworth, 

163 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGKAPHY 

and  has  largely  been  developed  by  him.  There 
are  certain  poems  which  at  times  have  seemed 
to  me,  each  by  itself,  the  most  beautiful  poems 
in  the  English  language.  Among  these  I  have 
already  mentioned  Spenser's  Epithalamium 
and  Gray's  Elegy.  Equal  to  them  in  my 
heart's  affection,  perhaps  superior  at  times, 
are  the  Lines  composed  a  few  miles  above 
Tintern  Abbey,  and  certain  parts  of  the  Ode 
on  the  Intimations  of  Immortality.  Espe- 
cially the  former  has  been  a  precious  posses- 
sion to  me  for  years.  Long  ago  I  learned  it 
by  heart,  practically  all  of  it;  and  countless 
times  throughout  the  years  that  have  passed 
since  then  I  may  say  in  Wordsworth's  own 
words,  that 

I  have  owed  to  them 
In  hours  of  weariness,  sensations  sweet, 
Felt  in  the  blood,  and  felt  along  the  heart, 
And  passing  even  into  my  purer  mind. 
With  tranquil  restoration. 

What  nature  would  have  meant  to  me  with- 
out Wordsworth  I  do  not  know ;  but  I  do  know 
that  now  she  means  all  in  all  to  me — a  refuge, 
a  tranquillizing  power,  something  that  lifts 
my  anxious  thought  out  of  itself  and  lays  the 
hand  of  peace  upon  my  troubled  heart;  a 
spirit  that  answers  to  mine,  an  opening  into 
164 


POETRY  AND  POETS 

the  infinite;  the  most  real  of  all  those  experi- 
ences which  make  me  feel  that  I  am  not  living 
in  a  blind  complex  of  material  forces,  crush- 
ing and  destroying,  with  impartial  hand,  bird 
and  beast,  flower  and  star,  body,  mind,  and 
soul  of  man,  but,  rather,  the  outward  expres- 
sion of  that  divine  spirit  which  is  in  all  things. 
For  I  too,  in  my  sallies  toward  nature,  after 
a  day's  work  in  classroom  or  study,  when  I 
walk  westward  on  a  winter  afternoon  when 
the  sun  is  setting,  or  beside  the  sea  or  in  the 
forest  in  summer  time,  I  too  have  felt  my 
heart  strangely  warmed  within  me;  I  too  have 

felt 

That  blessed  mood, 
In  which  the  burthen  of  the  mystery, 
In  which  the  heavy  and  the  weary  weight 
Of  all  this  unintelligible  world 
Is  lightened; 

I  too  have  felt 

A  presence  that  disturbs  me  with  the  joy 
Of  elevated  thoughts;  a  sense  sublime 
Of  something  far  more  deeply  interfused, 
Whose  dwelling  is  the  light  of  setting  suns. 
And  the  round  ocean  and  the  living  air. 
And  the  blue  sky,  and  in  the  mind  of  man. 

As  I  write  these  lines  I  feel  welling  up  in 
my  heart  a  deep  feeling  of  gratitude  to  the 
poet  who  has  meant  so  much  for  the  spiritual 

165 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY* 

development  of  my  life.  I  care  not  what 
technical  faults  may  be  found  in  his  work, 
what  commonplaceness  at  times,  what  trivi- 
ality, what  lack  of  humor,  or  any  other  thing 
which  may  be  charged  against  him,  to  me  he 
has  been  the  prophet  and  teacher  of  a  new 
spiritual  life. 

I  cannot  close  this  chapter  without  saying  a 
word  or  two  about  the  lesser  known  poets  of 
more  recent  times.  It  is  hard  to  do  justice 
to  one's  own  contemporaries.  Yet  there  have 
been  a  few  modern  poets  some  of  whose  verses 
have  singularly  touched  my  heart  and  imagi- 
nation. Such  was  Sidney  Lanier,  writing  in 
the  last  feverish  hours  of  his  life  the  finishing 
lines  of  his  beautiful  poem  of  The  Sun. 

Such  too  the  whole  group  of  modern  vaga- 
bond poets,  representing  in  strange  proximity 
the  lower  vices  of  drinking  and  debauch  with 
poetic  and  even  spiritual  genius  of  a  high  de- 
gree; as  in  the  case  of  Paul  Verlaine,  drunk- 
ard and  criminal,  a  modern  Villon,  spending 
his  time  alternating  between  prison,  cafe, 
and  hospital,  yet  writing  his  Bonne  Chan- 
son, and  especially  that  exquisite  song  in  the 
series  called  Sagesse,  where  the  poet,  lying 
ill  in  the  hospital,  sees  out  of  the  window  a 
bit  of  blue  sky,  the  waving  branches  of  a  tree, 

166 


POETKY  AND  POETS 

hears  the  bells  sweetly  chiming,  and  a  bird 
on  the  tree  singing  his  song,  and  comprehends 
that  this  is  true  life,  simple  and  tranquil, 
and  yet  for  him  forever  lost,  and  crying  out 
with  heart-breaking  pathos, 

*'Qu'as-tu  fait,  6  toi  que  voil§L, 
Pleurant  sans  cesse, 
Dis,  qu*as-tu  fait,  toi  que  voil^, 
De  ta  jeunesse?"^ 

Equally  pathetic  are  the  similar  figures  in 
English  literature:  Francis  Thompson,  with 
his  strangely  beautiful  Hound  of  Heaven,  and 
Ernest  Dowson,  with  his  lines. 

They  are  not  long,  the  weeping  and  the  laughter, 

Love  and  desire  and  hate. 
I  think  they  have  no  portion  in  us  after 

We  pass  the  gate. 

They  are  not  long  the  days  of  wine  and  roses. 

Out  of  a  misty  dream. 
Our  path  emerges  for  a  while,  then  closes 

Within  a  dream. 

But  most  fascinating  of  all  these  figures  of 
our  own  time,  the  man  of  genius  and  poet  un- 
able to  bear  up  his  part  in  the  struggle  of 
modern  life,  succumbing  at  last  in  despair, 
is  John  Davidson,  whose  poem,  written  just 
before  his  disappearance  from  the  eyes  of  men, 

1  What  have  you  done,  you  who  are  lying  here,  weeping  unceasingly, 
say,  what  have  you  done  with  your  youth? 
167 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

has  sung  itself  into  my  memory ;  that  poem  in 
which  he  tells  how  at  last  he  felt  the  time  had 
come  to  find  a  grave;  how  he  took  his  staff  in 
hand  and  wandered  forth  to  find  his  last 
abode ;  how,  in  spite  of  his  heavy  feet  and  the 
steepness  of  the  dusty  way,  he  went  on  "be- 
neath the  tragic  years,"  climbing  alone  the 
rocky  path  that  led  him  out  of  time  and  out  of 
all;  and  how  he  bids  farewell  to  all  things 
earthly : 

FareweU  the  hope  that  mocked,  fareweU  despair, 
That  went  before  me  still  and  made  the  pace; 

The  earth  is  full  of  graves,  and  mine  was  there 
Before  my  life  began,  my  resting  place. 

And  I  shall  find  it  out,  and  with  the  dead. 

Lie  dead  forever,  all  my  sayings  said. 

Deeds  all  done,  songs  all  sung, 
While  others  chant  in  sun  and  rain — 

"Heel  and  toe  from  dawn  to  dusk. 

Round  the  world  and  home  again." 

Somehow  or  other  this  poem,  which  is  the 
expression  of  the  fate  and  lot  of  vast  multi- 
tudes of  men  and  women,  marching  along  the 
dusty  highway  of  life,  seems  to  me  to  contain 
the  element  of  high  seriousness  that  Matthew 
Arnold  finds  in  all  the  greatest  poetry. 


168 


THE  WORLD-POETS 


169 


Then  felt  I  like  some  watcher  of  the  skies 
When  a  new  planet  swims  into  his  ken; 

Or  like  stout  Cortez  when  with  eagle  eyes 
He  stared  at  the  Pacific,  and  all  his  men 

Looked  at  each  other  with  a  wild  surmise. 
Silent,  upon  a  peak  in  Darien. 

— John  Keats, 


170 


CHAPTER  VI 

The  World-Poets 

I  HAVE  left  for  a  special  chapter  those  poets 
who  for  some  reason  or  other  have  been  classed 
by  the  consensus  of  the  best  authorities  as 
world-poets;  that  is,  who  are  not  primarily 
thought  of  as  belonging  to  any  one  nation  or 
period,  but  who  are  regarded  by  all  nations 
and  all  times  as  peculiarly  their  own.  What- 
ever may  be  the  merit  of  Racine  or  Chaucer 
or  Tasso  or  Shelley,  they  certainly  do  not 
belong  to  the  same  category  as  Shakespeare, 
Moliere,  Goethe,  or  Dante.  It  is  a  very  diffi- 
cult thing  to  give  to  oneself  a  clear  judgment 
as  to  what  constitutes  greatness  in  poetry. 
As  Emerson  says,  there  is  no  luck  in  literary 
reputation.  If  a  poet  is  universally  hailed  as 
great  by  the  common  verdict  of  mankind, 
there  must  be  some  reason  for  it.  I  have  tried 
sincerely  to  realize  this  truth  in  the  case  of 
the  poets  discussed  in  this  chapter.  I  know 
that  such  a  judgment  can  be  gained  only  after 

171 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

long  and  loving  study,  that  linguistic  and 
historical  research  is  not  enough,  that  their 
real  meaning  must  sing  itself  into  the  reader's 
mind  year  after  year,  must  be  taken  lovingly 
and  sympathetically  into  one's  very  heart. 
Then,  too,  all  men  have  their  different  moods, 
moods  when  poetry  seems  cold  and  tasteless, 
and,  again,  moods  when  it  stirs  the  heart  to 
its  inmost  depths.  We  differ  in  youth  and 
age,  in  respect  to  our  impressionableness  to 
the  power  of  poetry ;  what  pleased  us  once  may 
not  please  us  in  later  times.  We  are  affected 
differently  in  spring  and  fall,  summer  and 
winter,  at  morning,  noon,  and  night,  in 
crowded  city  streets  or  at  the  seashore  or  on 
mountain  top,  in  society  or  caught  in  the 
whirl  of  business,  in  time  of  physical  weari- 
ness, worry,  or  sickness  or  gloom;  all  these 
things  affect  our  appreciation  of  poetry.  And 
so  when  I  speak  of  the  great  poets  in  this  chap- 
ter, I  take  all  these  things  into  consideration. 
I  shall  endeavor  to  give  the  resultant  of  them 
and  the  sum  total  of  what  the  poets  herein 
discussed  have  meant  to  me. 

There  are  various  explanations  of  this  uni- 
versal admiration  for  certain  poets  of  the 
world's  literature.  In  the  case  of  Homer, 
for  instance,  there  is  the  utter  simplicity  of 

172 


THE  WORLD-POETS 

thought  and  style,  the  perfect  power  of  story- 
telling, the  nobility  of  the  whole  and  the  view 
it  gives  of  the  early  life  of  Greece,  fresh  with 
the  youth  of  the  world.  With  Moliere  it  is 
his  supreme  common  sense,  his  sane  philos- 
ophy of  life,  and  his  clear  vision  of  what  is 
right  in  life,  his  never-fading  characters  and 
the  form  of  comedy  which  he  first  founded  and 
brought  to  perfection,  and  which  no  one  has 
succeeded  in  reaching  since.  It  may  seem  to 
many  somewhat  peculiar  to  class  Moliere 
among  the  poets  discussed  in  this  chapter ;  and 
that  not  only  because  many  of  his  plays  are 
written  in  prose,  but  because  they  seem  so  far 
away  from  the  spirit  that  pervades  Homer, 
Shakespeare,  Dante,  Milton,  and  Goethe,  that 
spirit  that  lifts  the  thought  and  action  up 
out  of  the  little  things  of  everyday  life  into  a 
larger,  serener  atmosphere,  whence  life  and 
the  world  of  nature  and  man  are  seen  more  or 
less  against  the  background  of  eternity.  Even 
in  those  plays  of  Shakespeare  which  are  natu- 
rally to  be  compared  with  Moliere's  comedies, 
we  see  how  different  the  atmosphere  is,  the 
lack  in  the  French  writer  of  that  ineffable 
poetry  which  permeates  the  As  You  Like  It, 
Twelfth  Night,  Midsummer  Night's  Dream, 
the  absence  of  the  element  of  Romantic  love 

173 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

and  the  sentimental  features  as  seen  in  the 
English  poet's  Olivias,  Rosalinds,  and  Bea- 
trices, as  well  as  the  deeper  and  more  touching 
phases  of  womanly  love  and  tenderness,  all 
the  pathos  of  "beauty  walking  hand  in  hand 
with  anguish  the  downward  slopes  that  lead 
to  death/^ 

It  is  altogether  lil^ely  that  Moli^re  suffers 
more  injustice  on  the  part  of  the  world  in  re- 
gard to  his  true  genius  than  any  other  poet. 
Yet  to  me  he  is,  after  all,  a  world-poet,  even 
though  the  qualities  are  among  those  seen 
mostly  in  the  common  walks  of  life,  in  the  so- 
cial, business,  and  practical  world.  Although 
he  discusses  no  deep  problems  of  philosophy  or 
religion,  is  not  tormented  by  the  question  of 
the  whence  and  whither  and  why,  is  not  meta- 
physical or  transcendental,  but  remains  in  the 
everyday  life  of  man,  he  has  seemed  to  me  none 
the  less  a  deep  thinker  on  the  follies  and  foibles 
of  mankind,  a  philosopher  of  the  practical  sort, 
who  seeks  to  know  the  humbler  rules  that 
make  a  harmonious  society  possible,  a  teacher 
whose  influence  has  been  sadly  underrated  by 
all  except  those  who  have  seen  how  deeply  he 
has  impressed  his  views  of  life  on  modern  so- 
ciety. For  the  constant  representation  on  the 
stage  of  such  masterpieces  of  sane  lehens-phi- 
174 


THE  WORLD-POETS 

losophie  as  Les  Femmes  Savantes,  Le  Misan- 
thrope, Le  Bourgeois  Gentilhomme  cannot 
fail  to  have  an  abiding  influence  on  those  who 
see  them.  What  I  have  found  to  admire  in 
Moliere,  and  what  I  have  never  tired  of  see- 
ing, is  his  unequaled  wit,  his  genuine  yet 
never  bitter  satire  and  humor,  his  perfect  dia- 
logue, his  gallery  of  characters  good  and  bad, 
the  pedant  Vadius,  the  silly  blue-stockings 
Belise  and  Armande,  the  moody  misanthropic 
Ariste,  the  hypocritical  Tartuffe,  the  miserly 
Harpagon,  and  the  attractive  figures  of  the 
gay,  sensible,  frank,  and  sincere  women  such 
as  Henrietta  and  Elise. 

Above  all,  I  have  admired  the  triumphant 
common  sense  that  permeates  all  Moli^re 
wrote;  the  absolute  justice  of  his  observation 
of  human  nature,  his  love  of  the  sincere  and 
true  in  all  the  relations  of  life,  his  sense  of 
the  fitness  of  things,  his  interest  in  society, 
in  the  necessity  of  acquiring  the  art  of  living, 
his  grace  and  his  spirit  of  analysis,  his  logical 
thought,  his  gift  of  representing  a  whole  type 
of  characters  in  one  luminous  figure,  his 
genius  for  psychological  invention,  and  power 
of  logical  construction,  his  absolute  perfec- 
tion of  adapting  form  and  language  to  sub- 
ject— all  those  qualities  that  make  him,  to- 
175 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGEAPHY 

gether  with  Montaigne,  the  consummate  type 
of  the  French  national  genius. 

Also  I  have  found  in  Moli^re  a  charm  of 
personality,  without  which  even  the  greatest 
genius  loses  half  of  its  greatness.  It  is  the 
lack  of  this  that  has  spoiled  for  me  much  of 
the  work  of  such  men  as  Voltaire,  with  his 
vanity  and  sneers,  Victor  Hugo,  with  his  im- 
mense vanity,  always  quetant  Vadmiration  of 
the  world,  always  concerned  for  the  effect, 
^^capable  de  toiitcs  les  petitesses  pour  se 
grandir^' ;  or  Chateaubriand,  with  his  insuffer- 
able literary  insincerity.  In  the  case  of 
Moli^re  I  can  see  behind  this  kindly  satire  of 
his  on  human  follies  the  man  of  honor,  modest 
and  sincere,  amiable,  upright,  charitable,  hat- 
ing all  that  is  false,  untrue,  affected,  low,  or 
mean  and  hypocritical ;  teaching  to  all  modern 
civilization  the  doctrine  that  sincerity  and 
truth  is  the  basis  of  personal  integrity  and  the 
sine  qua  non  of  genuine  social  and  political 
life.  I  see  all  this,  and  I  say,  "Amen'^  when 
I  hear  Goethe  call  him  ^^ein  reiner  MenscW^ 
— a  genuine  man. 

But,  after  all,  the  chief  element  which  dis- 
tinguishes the  world-poets  from  the  others  is 
that  subtle  something  which  defies  analysis, 
yet  which  every  fond  reader  of  Homer,  Shake- 
176 


THE  WORLD-POETS 

speare,  or  Dante  feels,  what  Matthew  Arnold 
has  called  ^'high-seriousness."  Arnold's  deep- 
searching  essay  on  poetry  has  expressed  pro- 
foundly the  feeling  I  have  had  for  the  poets 
since  my  earliest  childhood.  To  me  this  has 
been  the  deepest  note  that  I  have  found  in 
all  I  have  read.  It  is  essentially  the  same 
thing  I  have  felt  in  the  presence  of  the  noblest 
monuments  of  art,  a  great  statue,  or  painting, 
or  cathedral.  It  is  the  same  feeling  I  have 
had  in  certain  aspects  of  nature,  the  sea  at 
night  beneath  the  stars,  the  Matterhorn  or 
Mont  Blanc  at  sunset;  the  same  experiences 
which  have  come  to  me  in  the  deeper  things  of 
life,  which  pierce  the  mysteries  of  life  and 
death,  those  feelings  which  form  what  we  call 
the  personal  religious  experiences.  Nor  is  it 
surprising  that  it  should  be  so,  for  literature 
is  only  the  outward  expression  of  inward  ex- 
perience; and  as  the  lesser  departments  of 
literature  express  the  more  superficial  experi- 
ences of  life,  so  the  deep  books  express  the 
deeper  experiences  of  the  soul.  Whatever 
arouses  within  us  the  feeling  of  Infinity, 
the  great  Unknown  around  us,  touches  us  in 
our  deepest  essence :  the  starry  firmament,  the 
great  ocean,  the  snowy  Alps,  the  death  of 
Socrates,  the  crucifixion  of  the  Saviour,  the 

177 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

famous  scene  between  Saint  Augustine  and 
Monica  at  Ostia,  a  sunrise  or  sunset,  the 
fashion  of  a  beautiful  face — all  these,  and 
many  more,  reach  silently  down  to  the  yery 
sources  of  our  being  and  produce  feelings  that 
are  substantially  the  same. 

Opposed  to  these  deep  experiences,  which 
are  but  few  and  far  between,  rare  at  most,  in 
some  cases  never  occurring,  are  the  countless 
ambitions,  interests,  amusements,  trifles  of 
our  everyday  consciousness — the  detail  of 
business,  social  life,  eating  and  drinking, 
sports,  and  recreations.  Literature,  dealing 
with  all  life,  deals  likewise  with  these.  But 
just  as  the  number  of  men  is  small  who  are 
capable  of  "high-seriousness''  in  thinking  in 
actual  life,  so  the  number  of  books  of  "high- 
seriousness"  is  small. 

There  are  some  books  which  occupy  an  hon- 
orable place  in  the  history  of  literature  which 
yet  have  none  of  this  quality.  In  others  there 
are  only  short  passages  which  attain  unto  it, 
yet  these  short  passages  are  enough  to  give 
immortality  to  those  who  wrote  them.  Here 
the  flashes  of  high-seriousness  are  few  and  far 
between.  Others,  like  Lucretius  and  Words- 
worth, have  lived  in  constant  communion  with 
the  Infinite,  and  produced  many  passages  of 

178 


THE  WORLD-POETS 

"high-seriousness/'  followed  often,  in  the  case 
of  the  latter,  by  a  sudden  descent  into  com- 
monplace and  bathos.  This  same  impression 
of  "high-seriousness"  is  often  produced  not 
only  in  poetry,  but  in  prose,  and  is  especially 
the  characteristic  of  the  works  of  men  like 
Plato  and  Emerson. 

There  are  three  great  poets  who  maintain 
a  constant  level  of  "high-seriousness,"  which 
is  not  characteristic  of  passages  here  and 
there,  but  produced  by  their  works  as  a  whole, 
by  conception,  by  details,  by  the  outer  form 
and  inner  spirit.  At  times,  in  a  certain  fear 
of  being  led  away  by  perfunctory  admiration, 
I  have  wondered  if  Homer's  fame  were  not 
largely  conventional;  whether  he  was  indeed 
admired  because  he  was  three  thousand  years 
old,  or  whether,  as  some  one  has  put  it,  he  is 
three  thousand  years  old  because  the  world 
has  loved  him.  It  is  only  in  recent  years  that 
I  have  come  to  know  by  genuine  experience 
his  real  greatness.  In  college  I  had  read  the 
Iliad,  but  I  never  felt  the  "pull"  of  him.  After 
graduation  I  was  engaged  in  special  studies, 
and  had  no  time  to  read  over  my  classics. 
Gradually  the  desire  to  know  ^^the  best  that 
has  been  thought  and  said"  led  me  to  renew 
my  acquaintance  with  all  great  poets.    I  was 

179 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

met  by  the  shadow  of  Homer  on  all  sides.  It 
was  largely  by  accident,  however,  that  I  ma*de 
him  my  own.  I  had  spent  a  year  in  Italy, 
and  having  been  asked  to  write  a  short  history 
of  Italian  literature  for  the  Chautauqua  read- 
ing course,  found  it  my  duty,  as  well  as  pleas- 
ure, to  read  all  of  its  literature.  Among  other 
books  I  read  the  famous  translations  of  the 
Iliad  and  Odyssey  by  Monti  and  by  Pinde- 
monte.  Through  the  medium  of  an  Italian 
translation  I  caught  for  the  first  time  the 
glamour  and  beauty  of  these  poems,  and  the 
experience  of  Keats  was  in  every  sense  my 
own,  for  I  too  felt 

like  some  watcher  of  the  skies, 

When  a  new  planet  swims  into  his  ken; 
Or  like  stout  Cortez,  when  with  eagle  eyes 

He  stared  at  the  Pacific,  and  all  his  men 


Silent,  upon  a  peak  in  Darien. 

I  then  read  the  same  books  in  English  trans- 
lations, and  felt  something  of  the  same  charm. 
And  then,  all  of  a  sudden,  the  thought  flashed 
through  my  mind,  "AVhy  not  try  it  in  Greek?" 
I  did  so,  and  after  a  good  deal  of  preliminary 
hard  w^ork,  I  turned  a  corner  in  the  dark  cor- 
ridor which  seems  to  be  the  beginning  of  the 
study  of  every  language,  and  saw  the  fair 
prospects  that  lay  beyond.     Since  that  time 

180 


THE  WORLD-POETS 

I  have  made  it  an  invariable  custom  to  read 
the  Iliad  or  the  Odyssey,  on  alternate  years. 
A  few  minutes  in  the  morning,  before  the 
day's  work  begins,  have  been  sufficient  to  ac- 
complish this  at  first  difficult  but  now  easy 
and  always  delightful  task.  After  reading 
them  many  times  the  language  of  Homer  has 
become  almost  as  easy  as  English.  I  say  this 
for  the  encouragement  of  those  who,  as  I  my- 
self did  once,  think  it  impossible  to  keep  up 
their  Greek,  ^schylus,  Sophocles,  and  Eu- 
ripides are  perhaps  too  difficult  to  keep  up 
in  the  same  way,  for  a  busy  man ;  and  with  the 
translations  of  Jowett  and  others  it  is  not 
necessary  to  read  Plato  and  Thucydides  in 
the  original ;  but  for  Homer,  anyone  with  the 
necessary  college  training,  and  the  desire  and 
a  little  hard  work,  can  conquer  him. 

It  is  not  easy  to  describe  the  pleasure  thus 
gained.  Almost  every  word  is  a  source  of 
pleasure,  and  in  the  words  of  Lord  Macaulay, 
when  he  after  many  years  re-read  his  classics, 
it  seems  as  if  one  never  really  knew  before 
what  intellectual  pleasure  was.  I  have  often 
wondered  if  the  satisfaction  of  reading  the 
Greek  has  not  something  to  do  with  this  pleas- 
ure; if  the  reputation  of  Homer  does  not  af- 
fect the  feelings  of  the  modern  reader,  just  as 

181 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

the  historic,  legendary,  and  poetic  associa- 
tions of  the  Rhine  make  many  travelers  ad- 
mire it  more  than  our  own  Hudson.  However 
that  may  be,  the  pleasure  I  have  in  reading 
him  over  and  over  again  is  always  the  same. 
Fifty  or  a  hundred  lines  are  enough  to  give 
tone  to  the  whole  day,  arouse  thoughts  that 
never  grow  stale,  call  up  pictures  that  become 
more  beautiful  as  the  years  go  on.  As  I  pen 
these  lines  what  a  galaxy  of  beautiful  char- 
acters, scenes,  and  pictures  rise  in  my  memory ! 
— the  memorable  dialogue  between  Glaucus 
and  Diomedes  on  the  field  of  battle,  with  the 
famous  words  of  the  former,  "The  race  of  men 
is  like  the  leaves  of  a  tree";  the  silent  pur- 
suit, capture,  and  death  of  Dolon,  the  scout, 
by  Ulysses  and  Diomedes  in  the  dead  of  the 
night;  the  chase  of  Hector  around  the  walls 
of  Troy,  and  his  death  at  the  hands  of  Achilles ; 
the  scene  in  the  tent  of  Achilles,  and  Priam's 
prayer  for  the  body  of  his  son ;  Andromache's 
farewell  to  Hector,  and  the  tender  family 
scene  w  hen  Astyanax  is  frightened  by  the  wav- 
ing plumes  on  his  father's  helmet;  the  last 
words  of  farewell  by  Helen  to  the  dead  Hector, 
telling  how  never  an  unkind  or  ungentle  word 
escaped  his  lips ;  the  escape  of  Ulysses  from  the 
island  of  Calypso,  Circe,  "burning  her  fragrant 

182 


THE  WORLD-POETS 

fire  and  singing  her  magic  song  as  she  weaves 
at  the  immortal  loom";  Nausicaa,  tender, 
sweet,  girlish,  pure,  and  innocent,  with  her 
sudden  love  for  the  noble  stranger  cast  upon 
her  father's  coast ;  the  banquet  in  the  palace  of 
the  king  of  the  Phseacians,  Ulysses  covering 
his  face  with  his  mantle  as  the  minstrel  sings 
about  Troy  and  the  Greeks ;  the  return  of  the 
weary  wanderer  after  twenty  years  to  Ithaca, 
lying  peacefully  asleep  in  the  boat  of  the 
Phseacians,  as  it  goes  cleaving  the  wine-dark 
waters  of  the  sea,  and  lands  him  on  his  native 
isle,  as  the  dawn  breaks  in  the  east ;  Penelope, 
the  faithful  wife;  the  slaughter  of  the  suitors, 
down  to  the  little  touch  of  the  old  dog  lying 
on  the  doorstep,  recognizing  his  master  after 
twenty  years,  wagging  his  tail  and  dying.  All 
this  has  power  to  touch  my  heart  with  un- 
dying interest.  Then  the  scenes  of  nature  in 
which  all  this  action  is  enshrined :  "the  winter 
landscapes,  the  lifting  of  a  cloud,  the  head- 
land buffeted  by  the  billows,  the  fields  of  corn 
bending  beneath  the  wind,  the  storm-cloud 
coming  over  the  sea,  the  earth  black  behind 
the  plow'';  the  garden  of  the  Phseacians, 
"where  the  fruit  never  perishes  or  fails,  winter 
or  summer,  where  the  vineyard  is  planted  in 
a  sunny  plot  of  land,   where   there  are  all 

183 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

manner  of  garden  beds,  and  two  fountains 
flowing  perpetually  fresh  and  clear." 

But  the  greatest  charm  of  all  has  been  the 
atmosphere  of  the  whole  poem,  the  dewy  fresh- 
ness and  beauty  of  the  morning  of  the  world, 
the  utter  simplicity  of  thought  and  language, 
the  absolute  perfection  of  the  art  of  narration, 
interrupted  only  from  time  to  time  by  some 
short  reflections  on  the  shortness  of  life  and 
the  limitations  of  human  endeavor;  above  all, 
the  nobility  of  spirit  that  pervades  the  whole, 
the  ^^high-seriousness"  which  never  suffers 
eclipse,  from  beginning  to  the  end.  Both 
the  Iliad  and  the  Odyssey  seem  to  move  in 
the  same  high,  clear  atmosphere,  and  in  them 
both  we  see  human  life  against  the  back- 
ground of  eternity.  No  wonder  that  those 
who  have  learned  to  know  the  compellant 
charm,  the  calming  influence  of  those  old-world 
poems,  love  to  turn  to  them  from  time  to  time, 
that 

Gladly,  from  the  songs  of  modern  speech 
Men  turn  and  see  the  stars,  and  feel  the  free. 
Shrill  wind  beyond  the  close  of  heavy  flowers, 
And  through  the  music  of  the  languid  hours. 
They  hear  like  ocean  on  a  western  beach. 
The  surge  and  thunder  of  the  Odyssey. 

In  all  the  above  remarks  I  do  not  speak  as 
a  Homeric  scholar.    I  have  not  had  the  time, 

184 


THE  WORLD-POETS 

even  had  I  felt  the  impulse,  to  study  Greek 
archaeology  or  philosophy,  or  to  follow  the 
intricacies  of  Homeric  learning.  At  times  this 
thought  comes  over  me  with  a  sense  of  dis- 
couragement, as  I  see  the  vast  number  of  books 
written  about  the  Iliad  and  the  Odyssey,  the 
multitude  of  critical  discussions  about  every 
phase  of  language,  meter,  text,  and  antiquities. 
Yet  when  I  turn  again  to  some  well-known 
and  well-loved  passage,  and  feel  the  sense  of 
peace  and  calm  that  comes  to  me  in  reading 
it,  I  feel  that  however  much  I  do  not  know  of 
Homer,  what  I  do  know  brings  to  me  pleasure 
and  profit. 

Of  the  two  ancient  poets  who  share  with 
Homer  the  glory  of  epic  fame,  one  is  entirely 
different  from  him  and  the  other  in  a  certain 
sense  a  close  imitation.  My  love  for  Lucretius 
is  something  like  his  own  fame — it  flowered 
late.  It  has  only  been  in  recent  years,  since 
science  has  made  such  marvelous  discoveries, 
and  since  a  new  appreciation  of  nature  has 
come,  that  men  have  seen  the  true  greatness  of 
the  poet-philosopher.  Although  I  had  read  Lu- 
cretius in  college,  in  extracts,  I  never  fully  ap- 
preciated him  till  these  maturer  years  I  was 
fortunate  enough  to  come  across  an  edition  by 
Henri  Bergson,  whose  works  on  creative  evolu- 

185 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

tion  have  recently  made  him  so  famous.  His 
edition  of  Lucretius  is  a  model  one,  accord- 
ing to  my  way  of  feeling.  The  introduction, 
notes,  and  extracts  all  work  harmoniously 
toward  giving  a  complete  view  of  the  genius 
of  that  strange  poet  of  the  atomistic  phi- 
losophy. 

I  hardly  know  why  I  have  been  so  attracted 
to  Lucretius,  but  so  it  is.  It  is  a  constant 
source  of  delight  to  see  how  he  has  antici- 
pated the  discoveries  of  modern  science,  not 
only  in  the  general  subject  of  the  consti- 
tution of  all  things  out  of  primordial  atoms, 
but  even  in  the  modern  science  of  anthropol- 
ogy. But  these  are  not  the  chief  things  that 
have  charmed  me.  It  is,  rather,  the  majestic 
ring  of  his  language  and  meter,  his  high  plane 
of  intellectual  power,  his  love  for  nature, 
especially  in  her  grander,  sublimer  moments, 
resembling  thus  the  modern  feeling;  his  in- 
finite pity  for  mankind,  doomed  to  inevitable 
destruction  in  the  inexorable  processes  of  the 
universe;  his  deep  spirit  of  sadness,  that  finds 
especially  expression  in  Book  III,  where  he 
sums  up  all  the  fears  and  cares  and  anxieties 
of  this  mortal  life  of  ours  in  language  more 
beautiful  than  that  of  any  of  our  modern 
pessimists — Schopenhauer,  Leopardi,  or  Mat- 

186 


THE  WORLD-POETS 

thew  Arnold.  Above  all,  I  have  been  fas- 
cinated by  that  spirit  of  "high-seriousness^' 
which  pervades  all  those  parts  of  his  poem 
which  are  not  mere  abstracts  of  the  philosophy 
of  Empedocles  and  Democritus;  his  power  of 
touching  the  heart  and  making  it  feel  the 
eternal  and  spiritual  all  about  us. 

For  all  these  reasons  the  somber  beauty  of 
Lucretius  has  come  to  exert  a  peculiar  fascina- 
tion on  me.  And  in  reading  him  I  feel  some- 
thing of  the  lofty  calm  and  serenity  of  the  poet 
himself,  finding  his  pleasure,  not  in  things 
themselves,  but  in  knowing  their  nature, 
and,  like  the  ship-wrecked  mariner,  gazing 
out  over  the  waste  of  water  he  has  escaped — 
a  figure  which,  especially  in  Lord  Bacon's 
translation,  contains  what  Lord  Tennyson 
calls  the  noblest  passage  of  prose  in  the  Eng- 
lish language :  "It  is  a  pleasure  to  stand  upon 
the  shore  and  to  see  the  ships  tost  upon  the 
sea;  a  pleasure  to  stand  in  the  window  of  a 
castle  and  to  see  a  battle  and  the  adventures 
thereof  below.  But  no  pleasure  is  comparable 
to  the  standing  on  the  vantage  ground  of 
truth;  and  to  see  the  errors  and  wanderings 
and  mists  and  tempests  in  the  vale  below, 
so  always  that  this  prospect  be  with  pity  and 
not  with  swelling  and  pride.     Certainly  it  is 

187 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

heaven  upon  earth  to  have  a  maa's  mind 
move  in  charity,  rest  in  Providence,  and  turn 
upon  the  poles  of  Truth/^ 

I  have  already  shown  in  the  case  of  Horace 
how  the  fame  of  the  great  poets  may  vary,  not 
only  from  man  to  man,  but  from  age  to  age. 
This  is  true  especially  in  the  world's  estimate 
of  the  greatness  of  Homer  and  Vergil.  All 
through  the  Dark  and  Middle  Ages  the  latter 
was  regarded  as  the  supreme  type  of  the  great 
epic  poet,  while  Homer  was  but  little  more 
than  a  name.  This,  of  course,  was  due  largely 
to  the  fact  that  Greek  itself  was  unknown  and 
the  story  of  Troy  and  its  fall  was  known  only 
from  brief  Latin  prose  versions  of  Darys  Phry- 
gius  and  Dictys  Cretensis.  It  was  only  after 
the  Renaissance  that  Homer  came  once  more 
to  his  own  high  place  in  the  world's  love  and 
admiration. 

Something  of  the  same  sort  happened  to  me. 
My  knowledge  of  and  love  for  Vergil  dates 
from  a  far  earlier  day  than  is  the  case  with 
Homer.  As  in  the  case  of  all  the  poets  I  read 
then,  I  was  attracted,  not  by  the  spirit  of 
literary  criticism,  but  entirely  by  delight  in 
beautiful  form  and  beautiful  thoughts,  by 
harmony  of  rhythm,  lovely  descriptions,  and 
romantic   episodes.     And  so  I  knew  Vergil 

188 


THE  WORLD-POETS 

well,  long  years  before  I  obtained  anything 
like  an  adequate  appreciation  of  Homer.  When 
this  occurred  I  could  not  help  making  a  com- 
parison between  them.  I  could  not  help  feel- 
ing that  the  characters  were  less  true  to  life 
than  those  of  Homer,  and  that  the  funda- 
mental idea  of  the  poem  was,  as  Mr.  Sellar 
points  out,  "more  adapted  to  a  great  historical 
work  like  Livy  or  Gibbon  than  to  a  great 
poem,"  that  he  lacks  Homer's  rapidity  of  ac- 
tion, lingering,  as  he  often  does,  over  details, 
digressions,  episodes,  not  closely  connected 
with  the  main  theme;  that  his  characters  are 
not  real  flesh  and  blood  as  those  of  Homer  are. 
Even  ^neas  makes  the  impression  on  me  of  a 
lay  figure,  the  instrument  of  fate,  never  acting 
on  his  own  initiative,  and  excusing  his  heart- 
less treatment  of  Dido  on  the  ground  that  Zeus 
had  higher  and  other  plans  for  him.  When 
we  compare  him  with  the  crafty  Ulysses,  the 
violent  Achilles,  the  heroic  and  gentle  Hector, 
we  see  the  difference  at  once.  So  the  character 
of  Dido,  affecting  as  it  is,  is  not  so  full  of  girl- 
ish charm  as  that  of  Nausicaa,  nor  of  womanly 
dignity  and  strength  as  that  of  Andromache. 
So  too  the  freshness  of  poetry  of  the  early 
morning  of  the  world  is  wanting  in  Vergil; 
and    while    in    subject-matter    he    imitates 

189 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGEAPHY 

Homer,  yet  in  all  the  elements  of  outward 
form  he  follows  more  closely  the  Alexandrians. 

And  yet,  in  spite  of  all  this,  Vergil  still  re- 
tains for  me  his  compelling  charm;  and  I 
never  tire  of  turning  over  the  pages  of  his 
great  poem;  never  tire  of  reading  over  again 
the  famous  scenes  and  episodes — the  arrival 
of  -^neas  in  Carthage,  the  visit  to  Hades,  the 
pathetic  death  of  Pallas,  the  story  of  the 
friendship  of  Nisus  and  Euryalus ;  and,  above 
all,  the  world-famous  story  of  Dido,  told  with 
infinite  tenderness,  that  eternal  symbol  of  the 
deserted  woman,  which  reappears  countless 
times  in  the  literature  of  after  times,  a  story 
told  with  such  pathos  and  charm  that  it  has 
touched  the  heart  of  humanity,  and  has  made 
the  name  of  Dido  as  famous  in  its  way,  as  the 
type  of  those  unfortunate  ones  more  sinned 
against  than  sinning,  as  the  name  of  Helen 
has  been  as  the  type  of  the  baleful  effect  of 
womanly  beauty. 

Back  of  the  poetry  of  Vergil  is  the  man  him- 
self, the  lover  of  righteousness,  purity,  holi- 
ness, hater  of  fraud,  sin,  dishonor,  full  of  lofty 
patriotism,  passionate  love  for  Italy,  simple 
in  his  tastes,  rejoicing  in  the  charms  of  rural 
life.  And  over  all  he  wrote  he  has  spread  an 
atmosphere  of  poetry,  the  poetry  of  love,  home, 

190 


THE  WORLD-POETS 

country,  friends,  and  the  sadness  of  human 
kind,  which  found  expression  in  the  one  im- 
mortal line,  ^^Sunt  lachrymae  rerum  et  men- 
tern  mortalia  tangunt/^ 

All  these  combine  to  attract  me  to  his  poem. 
Later  years  have  given  an  additional  charm, 
as  my  studies  in  literature  have  shown  me  the 
immense  influence  of  Vergil  over  all  succeed- 
ing centuries,  an  influence  greater  than  that 
of  any  other  poet.  This  influence  I  can  no 
more  separate  from  my  thought  of  Vergil  than 
I  can  forget,  in  sailing  up  the  Rhine,  the  at- 
mosphere made  up  of  history,  legend,  and 
poetry  that  a  thousand  years  have  hung  about 
that  historic  stream.  And  so  in  thinking  of 
Vergil  it  is  not  only  the  man,  tender  and 
gentle,  the  poet  and  patriot  and  deeply  reli- 
gious singer  of  righteousness,  that  I  see,  but  the 
long  centuries  of  worship  and  love  that  have 
made  him  the  most  influential  and  best  loved 
of  all  poets  of  ancient  time ;  loved  by  such  men 
as  Saint  Jerome,  in  spite  of  his  sense  of  sin 
in  being  thus  devoted  to  a  pagan;  by  Dante, 
who  made  him  his  guide  through  the  Inferno 
and  Purgatory,  and  calls  him  his  light,  his 
comfort,  his  more  than  father ;  or  by  Tennyson, 
whose  poem  on  Vergil  not  only  penetrates  to 
the  essence  of  his  genius,  but  reveals  his  own 

191 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

deep,  personal  love  as  well  for  this  ^Vhite- 
souled''  poet  of  ancient  Eome. 

In  discussing  the  great  poets  I  am  not  try- 
ing to  assign  each  one  a  place  in  the  world's 
literature,  or  to  judge  them  from  the  stand- 
point of  a  professional  critic.  I  am  simply 
trying  to  give  an  account,  as  frankly  and  sin- 
cerely as  I  can,  of  my  own  attitude  toward 
them,  my  own  feeling  of  reverence  and  of  love. 
I  have  tried  to  find  the  good  in  all,  believing 
that  reverence  is  the  only  way  to  get  a  just 
view  of  them.  And  yet  when  any  phase  of 
even  the  greatest  poets  produces  in  me  a  sense 
of  discord,  I  cannot  do  otherwise  than  give 
expression  to  it.  Again,  in  writing  my  im- 
pressions I  do  not  always  seek  to  propound 
original  theories,  or  to  emphasize  what  I  have 
found  out  independently  of  others.  My  read- 
ing of  the  great  poets  has  always  included  the 
best-known  commentators  and  critics  there- 
upon. What  my  ideas  of  Homer  would  be 
without  the  light  shed  on  him  by  such  men 
as  Jebb  and  Lang,  or  my  thought  of  Plato 
without  the  writings  of  Jowett  and  Emerson, 
I  do  not  know.  All  these  things  -have  mingled 
with  my  own  thoughts,  reflections,  judgments 
in  such  a  way  as  to  produce  a  sort  of  composite 
picture,  in  which  I  should  find  it  difficult  to 

192 


THE  WOELD-POETS 

separate  what  I  might  call  my  own  opinion 
from  those  of  others.  I  have  tried  to  get  a 
harmonious  picture  of  them  in  my  brain,  and 
to  give  expression  to  this  in  clear  and  simple 
manner.  The  picture  of  Shakespeare,  Homer, 
Goethe,  and  Dante  is  mine  now,  "a  dear 
possession  ever  ripening  to  clearer  shape''; 
and  if  some  or  many  of  the  lineaments  in  the 
picture  have  been  suggested  by  others,  the  pic- 
ture as  a  whole  is  still  mine,  nevertheless. 

What  I  have  just  said  applies  especially  to 
the  case  of  Goethe.  I  have  found  more  diffi- 
culty in  obtaining  a  harmonious  conceptiou  of 
him  than  of  almost  any  other  poet  I  have  read ; 
and.  I  have  consulted  conscientiously  the 
works  of  the  best  Goethe  commentators,  in 
order  to  get  a  satisfactory  solution  to  what 
was  for  me  an  enigma.  For  years  I  have  loved 
and  read  the  works  of  Goethe.  Many  of  his 
lyrics  and  parts  of  Faust  I  have  taken  pleasure 
in  learning  by  heart.  I  remember  one  ocean 
voyage  in  which  I  did  nothing  practically  but 
go  over  the  first  part  of  Faust,  committing 
to  memory  the  famous  passages.  In  no  poet 
have  I  found  more  breadth  and  depth  of 
scholarship,  more  wise  views  of  life  and  con- 
duct, more  exquisite  pathos  and  surpassing 

poetry.     And  yet  there  is  an  instinct  in  all 
193 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

men  to  find  some  principle  of  unity,  some  law 
of  order  and  harmony ;  and  this  instinct  works 
not  in  the  world  of  nature  and  metaphysics 
alone,  but  in  the  field  of  art  as  well.  There 
must  be  one  great  coordinating  principle  in 
all  things;  and  it  is  this  principle,  the  power 
to  give  a  sense  of  harmony  and  unity  in  a  great 
work  of  art,  that  forms  the  basis  of  what  we 
may  call  the  architectonic  genius.  This  ele- 
ment forms  the  most  important  part  of  Michael 
Angelo's  genius,  in  the  field  of  painting, 
and  is  illustrated  in  the  skillful  way  in 
which  he  adorned  the  unpromising  shape  of 
the  Sistine  Chapel;  this  element  is  likewise 
characteristic  of  Homer's  Iliad  and  Odys- 
sey. It  is  not  prominent  in  VergiPs  ^neid, 
where  the  first  and  last  six  books  are  con- 
tiguous parts  of  the  poem,  rather  than  the 
constituents  of  one  organic  whole.  The 
architectonic  genius,  likewise,  is  not  the 
chief  characteristic  of  Shakespeare,  whose 
greatness  is  shown  in  an  infinite  yariety  of 
great  qualities  rather  than  in  one  work  of  clas- 
sic proportion.  It  is  the  chief  glory  of  Dante's 
Diyina  Commedia,  where  all  things  move 
from  the  first  canto  to  the  last,  where  the 
thousand  details  are  all  arranged  in  proper 

proportion  to  the  whole.    It  is  not  in  vain  that 
194 


THE  WORLD-POETS 

Scherer  and  Longfellow  have  compared  it  to 
a  cathedral,  with  crypts  below,  the  long  aisles 
and  transepts,  the  stained-glass  windows, 
fiends  and  gargoyles  and  statues  of  all  sorts, 
and  the  melodious  bells  among  the  spires,  pro- 
claiming the  elevation  of  the  Host. 

This  is  the  quality  I  have  found  most  miss- 
ing in  Goethe,  especially  in  his  Faust.  In  this, 
his  masterpiece,  we  find  many  and  great 
beauties — the  exquisite  poetry  of  the  Gretchen 
scenes,  the  immortal  figures  of  Faust  and 
Mephistopheles,  symbols  of  the  double  side 
of  human  nature,  symbols,  as  true  as  Don 
Quixote  and  Sancho  Panza,  of  the  eternal 
contrast  of  the  ideal  and  the  real,  the  soaring 
and  the  crawling  element  in  man;  but  the 
architectonic  genius  is  not  there.  A  still 
deeper  lack  in  Goethe  I  have  found  in  the  ab- 
sence of  tenderness,  of  spiritual  aspiration. 
Faust,  in  spite  of  all  his  changes,  remains 
from  beginning  to  end  of  the  earth  earthy, 
the  symbol  of  man,  working  out  his  own  sal- 
vation, not  with  fear  and  trembling,  but  with 
energy,  with  all  the  forces  of  manhood,  intel- 
lect, and  courage  at  their  highest.  It  is  the 
epic  of  the  active  life  of  man  who  errs  so 
Jang  er  streht  and  yet  must  do  nothing  else, 
whose  very  failures,   as  in   Browning's  phi- 

195 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

losophy,  are  prophecies  of  triumph  in  the 
future  world.  The  metaphysical,  ethereal, 
spiritual  element  a>s  we  find  it  in  Plato,  Schil- 
ler, Browning,  and  the  specifically  religious 
element  of  Dante  and  Milton,  are  not  here. 
These  are  the  chief  elements  of  the  German 
poet  that  I  find  lacking.  And  yet  it  would  be 
foolish  to  linger  over  them  in  the  case  of  one 
whose  genius  has  shown  itself  in  so  many 
ways,  whose  infiuence  on  his  own  and  follow- 
ing generations  cannot  he  overestimated,  in 
whom  I  myself  have  found  constant  pleasure 
for  many  years,  and  from  whom  I  have  derived 
many  new  views  of  life — for  all  which  things 
I  am  profoundly  grateful.  I  am  thankful  to 
him  for  the  broader  vision  of  living  that  he  has 
brought  me,  for  the  example  he  has  given  the 
world  of  ein  ganzer  Mensch^  for  his  wise  reflec- 
tions on  human  existence,  for  his  unequaled 
lyrical  poetry,  for  the  characters  of  Faust 
and  Mephistopheles,  Tasso,  Clarchen,  and 
Wilhelm  Meister,  for  deep  and  suggestive 
reflections  on  art,  his  wise  sayings,  his 
many-sided  intellectual  and  scientific  inter- 
ests, his  rare  combination  of  a  practical  man 
of  the  world  with  the  sensitive  nature  of 
the  poet,  his  fascinating  personality,  his  god- 
like physique,  his  practical  philosophy  of  life, 
196 


THE  WORLD-POETS 

which  he  strove  to  bring  out  in  Faust,  which  ' 
is  to  the  nineteenth  century  what  Dante's 
Divina  Commedia  is  to  the  thirteenth,  and 
which,  although  his  architectonic  genius  was 
not  sufficient  to  make  it  perfect,  yet  is  the  most 
important  literary  monument  of  modern  times. 
This  great  poem,  with  the  profound  teaching 
of  its  theme — ^^the  redemption  of  a  self- 
centered  and  self-tormenting  pessimist  through 
the  enlarged  experiences  of  life,  culminating  in 
self-forgetful  activity" — cannot  be  studied  too 
often,  on  the  one  hand  by  those  who  are  apt 
to  dissipate  their  intellectual  and  moral  life 
in  tenuous  theories  and  mystical  vagaries, 
and,  on  the  other,  by  those  whose  chief  object 
in  life  is  that  search  after  pleasure  whose  only 
outcome  is  sure  to  be  disappointment  and  pes- 
simism. 

From  all  that  we  have  said  above  it  is  ap- 
parent that  Goethe  is  in  no  sense  a  religious 
poet.  The  key  to  his  philosophy  lies  this  side 
of  the  grave.  His  poem  is  full  of  practical 
affairs  from  beginning  to  end;  it  is  the  nine- 
teenth century  in  all  its  complexity,  its 
science,  commerce,  philanthropy,  its  advance 
along  all  lines  of  material  progress  that  we 
are  led  to  see.  In  all  this  respect  he  is  dia- 
metrically opposite  to   Milton,  whose  poem, 

197 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

like  himself,  "was  like  a  star  and  dwelt  apart'^ 
from  the  struggle  and  ways  of  men. 

Milton  too  is  one  of  the  poets  of  my  early 
years,  and  I  remember  yet  what  deep  pleasure 
I  found  in  the  magic  rhythm  of  his  verse,  the 
eloquent  roll  of  his  language,  and  the  perfect 
charm  of  his  lyric  and  elegiac  poetry  L' Alle- 
gro, II  Penseroso,  and  especially  Lycidas. 
Yet  with  Milton,  as  with  Goethe,  I  do  not  find 
such  a  sense  of  perfect  assent  as  I  feel  when 
reading  Shakespeare,  Homer,  or  Dante.  I 
cannot  help  feeling  the  great  empty  spaces 
and  dreary  wastes  along  which  I  have  had  to 
drag  myself,  by  sheer  force  of  will :  those  pas- 
sages which  contain  theological  controversy, 
biblical  commentary,  anthropomorphism,  long 
orations,  the  grotesque  allegory  of  sin  and 
death,  and  the  absurdity  of  angels  fighting 
with  cannons,  or  tearing  up  whole  mountains 
with  all  their  rocks,  waters,  woods,  and  "by 
their  shaggy  tops  uplifting,'^  bearing  "them 
in  their  hands."  Yet  all  this  is  couched  in 
language  of  unequaled  power  and  beauty,  and 
in  majestic  verse  unknown  before  or  since  in 
English  literature. 

It  seems  ungrateful  to  say  all  these  things 
about  a  poet  who  has  done  so  much  for  the 
cause  of  religion  and  civil  liberty,  who  has 

198 


THE  WORLD-POETS 

influenced  so  profoundly,  not  only  the  lan- 
guage and  poetry  of  England,  but  has  in- 
creased the  moral  life  of  the  whole  English- 
speaking  race  more  than  words  can  tell.  To 
him  I  owe  many  a  delightful  hour  in  my 
younger  days  when  reading  over  the  wonder- 
ful passages  in  which  he  gives  his  invocation 
to  light,  the  description  of  the  Earthly  Para- 
dise, the  character  of  Eve  and  her  love  for 
Adam,  the  fresh  charm  of  the  momingtide  of 
the  world. 

In  these  later  years  I  have  come  more  or 
less,  however,  to  find  increased  pleasure  in 
the  works  of  a  writer  when  I  love  and  admire 
his  personality.  A  large  amount  of  the  pleas- 
ure I  get  in  reading  Dante,  Vergil,  Plato, 
Browning  comes  from  the  knowledge  I  have 
that  their  works  are  but  the  expression  of  the 
man  behind  them.  Especially  in  the  case  of 
Milton  does  this  pleasure  mate  up  for  many 
of  the  defects  of  his  poetical  work,  for,  in  spite 
of  those  parts  of  his  life  which  seem  unlovely, 
in  spite  of  the  passion  and  violence  which  mar 
many  of  his  prose  works,  Milton's  life  was  a 
noble  one,  and  he  has  contributed  this  quality 
to  his  poetry.  For  it  is  the  unique  merit  of 
Milton  to  raise  his  readers  far  above  the  petty 
details  of  life  and  to  unroll  before  their  eyes 

199 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

the  great  tragedy  of  sin,  suffering,  and  salva- 
tion. Whate\^er  criticism  we  may  make  "of 
Paradise  Lost,  we  cannot  deny  that  if  it  has 
not  three  of  Homer's  characteristics,  as  given 
by  Matthew  Arnold — rapidity,  plainness  of 
thought,  plainness  of  speech — it  does  have 
to  a  supreme  degree  the  fourth — nobility. 
And  so  when  I  take  up  the  works  of  Milton  I 
see  the  man  behind  them — that  spirit  dedi- 
cated to  a  life  of  high  endeavor  in  art,  in 
literature,  in  religion;  I  see  him  at  college, 
earnest  and  studious,  seeking  knowledge,  not 
for  the  sake  of  pedantry,  but  to  form  his  life 
and  character;  I  see  him  at  Horton,  prepar- 
ing himself  by  study,  solitude,  forest  walks, 
for  his  future  work;  I  hear  him  saying,  ^^An 
inward  prompting  which  grows  daily  upon 
me,  that  I  by  labor  and  intent  study,  which 
I  take  to  be  my  portion  in  this  life,  joined 
with  a  strong  propensity  of  nature,  I  might 
perhaps  leave  something  so  written  to  after- 
times  as  they  shall  not  willingly  let  die"; 
and  again:  ^^I  was  confirmed  in  this  opinion 
that  he  who  would  not  be  frustrated  of  his 
hope  to  write  well  hereafter  in  laudable  things 
ought  himself  to  be  a  true  poem,  .  .  ,  not 
presuming  to  sing  high  praises  of  heroic  men 
or  famous  cities,  unless  he  have  in  himself  the 

200 


THE  WORLD-POETS 

experience  and  practice  of  all  that  is  praise- 
worthy''; and  again  I  hear  him  declaring: 
"Not  only  will  he  have  knowledge,  but  wisdom 
and  moral  development.  He  will  cherish  con- 
tinually a  pure  mind  in  a  pure  body.  He  will 
have  religion,  for  it  is  from  God  that  the  poet's 
thoughts  come.  To  this  must  be  added  in- 
dustry and  select  reading,  study  and  observa- 
tion and  insight  into  all  seemly  and  generous 
action  and  affairs."  I  see  him  in  his  blind- 
ness, brave,  unyielding  in  his  great  purpose; 
then  I  see  him  writing  his  three  great  poems. 
Paradise  Lost,  Paradise  Eegained,  and 
Samson  Agonistes,  blind,  destitute,  friend- 
less, yet  not  cast  down,  seeking  to  justify  the 
ways  of  God  to  men,  preaching  righteousness, 
and  judgment  to  come,  enriching  the  worfd 
with  the  majesty  of  his  thought,  imagination, 
heart,  and  his  own  lofty  character.  What 
though  certain  parts  of  his  poem  are  dreary 
and  grotesque,  what  though  Puritanism  is  no 
longer  the  religion  of  England,  if  the  neglect 
of  the  Bible  to-day  tends  to  lessen  the  number 
of  those  who  read  the  Paradise  Lost?  No 
one  can  contemplate  this  high  dedicated  spirit 
without  admiration;  no  one  can  read  his 
poetry  or  the  study  of  his  life  without  being 
uplifted. 

201 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

I  come  now  to  a  poet  who,  with  Homer  and 
Dante,  has  come  to  occupy  the  chief  place"  in 
my  reverence  and  love.  From  early  youth  I 
have  felt  the  fascination  of  that  mighty  mind. 
There  is  a  great  deal  of  conventional  admira- 
tion in  the  world,  and  one  can  hardly  be  sure 
how  much  his  own  respect  for  a  world-poet 
may  be  influenced  by  that  WeltgescMchte 
which  Schiller  declares  to  be  das  Weltgericht. 
There  is  a  natural  hesitation  to  say  anything 
adverse  to  a  great  writer,  or  even  to  any  part 
of  his  work.  As  Socrates  says,  there  seems 
to  be  a  sort  of  conspiracy  in  speaking  of  a 
great  man  to  praise  him,  not  to  criticize  him. 
And  yet  there  are  few  indeed  of  the  world's 
greatest  poets  who  have  not  their  faults,  and 
whose  works  we  need  to  read  or  admire  in 
their  entirety.  A  special  student  of  Words- 
worth, or  Shelley,  or  Goethe,  or  Victor  Hugo 
must  read  all  their  works  to  form  an  accurate 
judgment;  but  the  general  reader,  who  seeks 
only  what  is  best  in  the  world's  literature,  can 
omit  one  half,  or  even  two  thirds,  of  the  works 
of  many  of  the  poets.  Those  who  teach  youth 
to  appreciate  literature  should  emphasize  this 
fact,  and  when  writing  of  such  men  should  not 
speak  as  if  all  their  works  were  of  uniform 
value  and  interest.    All  critics  and  all  teach- 

202 


THE  WORLD-POETS 

ers  are  tempted,  "after  they  have  disinterred 
from  a  heap  of  rubbish  some  solitary  frag- 
ments of  pure  gold,  to  exhibit  these  treasures 
only,  rather  than  to  display  all  the  refuse 
from  which  they  had  to  extract  them/' 

I  have  been  led  to  make  these  reflections  in 
discussing  my  own  experience  with  Shake- 
speare. In  Homer  I  have  felt,  rightly  or 
wrongly,  that  nearly  every  word  seems  per- 
fect, and,  as  I  shall  show  later,  the  same  is 
largely  true  for  me  of  Dante's  Divina  Com- 
niedia.  In  regard  to  Shakespeare,  early  hav- 
ing felt  his  power,  having  no  one  to  point  out 
his  inequalities,  I  felt  it  incumbent  on  me  to 
admire  equally  all  he  wrote,  looking  on  it  as 
my  fault,  and  not  the  poet's,  if  I  could  not 
enjoy  the  quips  and  puns  of  the  eternal  clowns. 

This  was  for  a  long  time  a  trouble  to  me, 
and  even  now  I  have  a  half  feeling  that  I  may 
exjyose  myself  to  ridicule  or  contempt  for 
venturing  to  say  a  word  derogatory  to  the 
great  poet.  "I  remember,"  says  Ben  Jonson, 
"the  players  have  often  mentioned  it  as  an 
honor  to  Shakespeare,  that  in  his  writing, 
whatever  he  penned,  he  nev^er  blotted  out  a 
line.  My  answer  hath  been.  Would  he  had 
blotted  a  thousand — which  they  thought  a 
malevolent  speech.     I  had  not  told  posterity 

203 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

this  but  for  their  ignorance,  who  choose  that 
circumstance  to  commend  their  friend  by, 
wherein  he  most  faulted,  and  to  justify  mine 
own  candor;  for  I  loved  the  man  and  do  honor 
his  memory,  on  this  side  of  idolatry,  as  much 
as  any." 

In  another  respect  Shakespeare  is  not  so 
well  adapted  to  become  one's  body-poet,  so  to 
speak,  and  that  is  his  works  are  not  so  con- 
venient to  handle  as  those  of  Homer  and 
Dante.  These  two  men  in  having,  each,  one 
great  work  of  supreme  genius,  which  can  be 
contained  in  one  volume  of  moderate  com- 
pass have  no  little  advantage  in  the  race  for 
immortality.  Shakespeare's  greatness,  equal 
to  theirs,  is  scattered  over  thirty  volumes, 
not  all  of  equal  greatness;  for  what  consti- 
tutes the  highest  quality  in  Homer  and- 
Dante — the  architectonic  genius — is  not  ex- 
hibited completely  in  all  of  Shakespeare's 
plays.  Yet,  in  spite  of  all  this,  there  are  times 
when  to  me  the  vast  genius  of  Shakespeare,  his 
deep  insight  into  the  human  heart,  his  un- 
rivaled power  of  eloquent  expression,  his 
tragedy  and  comedy,  his  pathos  and  tender- 
ness, the  air  of  ineffable  poetry  which  hovers 
over  his  works — all  the  various  elements  of  his 
cosmic   power — seem    to    lift   him    above   all 

204 


THE  WORLD-POETS 

others.  How  fresh  and  new  his  plays  seem, 
never  growing  old!  No  matter  how  often  1 
read  it,  I  cannot  help  being  touched,  for  in 
stance,  by  the  noble  scene  in  Brutus's  tent  at 
Philippi,  the  quarrel  with  Cassius,  the  news 
of  Portia's  death,  the  generous  remorse  of 
Cassius,  Lucius  falling  asleep,  and  Brutus  cov- 
ering him  with  his  cloak.  So  too,  only  a  short 
time  ago,  in  an  idle  ten  minutes  I  took  up 
Othello,  a  play  I  had  read  a  dozen  times, 
and  tears  came  to  my  eje^  as  I  read  the 
last  scenes,  especially  Desdemona's  tender 
and  pathetic  w^ords.  The  faults  of  Shake- 
speare are  almost  entirely  those  of  detail, 
and  of  such  a  nature  as  to  make  it  almost 
ridiculous  to  mention  them,  in  view  of  the 
supreme  greatness  of  his  universal  genius. 
For,  equally  with  Homer  and  Dante,  the  abid- 
ing atmosphere  of  Shakespeare  is  one  of 
"high -seriousness."  As  I  read  him  the  great 
walls  of  eternity,  the  moenia  flainmantia 
mundiy  seem  to  swing  back,  and  I  see  the 
eternal  pathos  and  beauty  of  those  elemental 
passions  which  forever  make  up  the  story  of 
human  life — hate,  ambition,  jealousy,  and, 
above  all,  love,  the  infinite  variety  of  which 
age  cannot  wither  nor  use  stale. 

Maeterlinck  says  that  no  man  really  pos- 

205 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

sesses  a  truth  until  it  has  softened  and 
changed  something  within  him.  This  is  true 
of  my  experience  with  Shakespeare.  As  a  boy 
I  read  him  with  intense  delight,  learned  hun- 
dreds of  lines  by  heart,  and,  though  my  read- 
ing was  entirely  uncritical,  I  was  dazzled  by 
the  splendor  of  his  language  and  charmed  by 
the  delicacy  of  his  fancy,  touched  by  his 
pathos,  solemnized  by  his  tragedy,  melted  by 
the  charm  of  his  poetry.  But  only  in  later 
years  did  he  really  enter  my  life.  This  was 
done  through  the  gradual  vision  of  a  deeper 
meaning  in  his  plays,  a  sense  of  the  mystery 
of  life,  the  strange  contrast  between  the  ap- 
parent greatness  of  man  and  his  actual  little- 
ness, between  the  brightness  of  joy  and  beauty 
and  the  baffling  problems  of  life,  and  the 
all-encompassing  darkness  beyond.  These 
thoughts  have  grown  upon  me  in  later  life, 
with  a  sense  of  the  evanescence  of  all  things ; 
and  Shakespeare  has  come  to  have  a  mean- 
ing I  never  saw  before  in  the  heyday  of  youth- 
ful life. 

And  so  he  seems  to  me  to  be  the  epitome  of 
all  mankind,  nay,  of  all  nature.  In  reading 
him  I  catch  a  glimpse  of  the  wonderful  spec- 
tacle of  the  world — singing  bird  and  perfumed 
flower,  heaven-kissing  hill  and  green  valley, 
206 


THE  WORLD-POETS 

river  and  sea,  and  over  them  all  the  spangled 
canopy  of  heaven.  I  see  the  England  of  the 
spacious  days  of  Queen  Elizabeth,  her  lordly 
cities,  green  fields,  and  sylvan  forests;  the 
brilliant  life  of  the  Renaissance,  the  eager 
adventures  of  her  vigorous  sons  on  land  and 
sea,  the  wars  with  France  for  the  supremacy 
of  Europe,  the  innumerable  men  and  women 
passing  in  and  out  upon  this  stage,  kings  and 
peasants,  knightly  men  and  lovely  women,  all 
standing  in  the  bright  light  of  the  world,  yet 
against  the  darker  background  of  the  great 
unknown  mystery  of  that  life  which  seems 
as  unreal  as  the  unsubstantial  pageant  of  the 
very  clouds  themselves.  Above  all,  I  have 
gradually  come  to  see  the  wonderful  person- 
ality of  the  great  man  back  of  the  plays:  a 
man  tossed  by  doubt,  stirred  by  passion,  see- 
ing deeply  into  the  problems  of  life,  mingling 
with  the  world,  yet  keeping  the  independence 
of  the  solitude  of  his  own  mind  with  perfect 
sweetness,  taking  life  as  it  is,  seeing  good 
even  in  a  Falstaff,  sensitive  to  the  beauty  of 
the  world,  and  especially  to  the  unconquerable 
charm  of  noble  womanhood,  whether  the  ten- 
der naive  grace  of  a  Perdita  or  Miranda,  the 
pathos  of  Desdemona  or  Ophelia,  or  the  ma- 
turer  charm  of  Katherine  and  Hermione. 
207 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

I  have  conscientiously  read  all  the  plays 
of  Shakespeare^ — rather  studied  them  mor6  or 
less.  Yet,  after  all,  the  number  of  plays  to 
which  I  turn  frequently  is  not  large.  The 
As  You  Like  It,  Twelfth  Night,  Midsummer 
Night's  Dream,  Hamlet,  King  Lear,  Julius 
C^sar,  Merchant  of  Venice,  Macbeth,  Othello, 
Winter's  Tale,  Cleopatra,  Tempest — these  are 
the  plays  in  which  I  never  cease  to  find  deep 
pleasure  and  profit. 

It  was  only  after  I  had  gone  to  college  that 
I  first  learned  the  additional  charm  that  comes 
from  the  scholarly  method  of  studying  a  great 
poet,  that  I  learned  to  group  his  plays  chrono- 
logically, to  trace  evidence  of  progress  in 
views  of  life,  in  literary  workmanship.  This 
has  brought  much  more  pleasure  than  mere 
desultory  reading — something  of  the  same 
benefit  that  comes  to  a  man  walking  in  beauti- 
ful landscape,  whose  trained  eye  recognizes 
the  various  kinds  of  plants  or  the  evidence  of 
the  world's  physical  development  in  the  geo- 
logical strata  before  him,  for,  after  all,  there 
is  an  unquenchable  instinct  to  synthesize  all 
things,  to  find  the  meaning  of  them.  This  is 
not  only  true  of  science  but  of  history  and 
literature  in  general.  It  is  also  true  of  Shake- 
speare in  particular.    As  I  read  his  plays  at 

208 


THE  WORLD-POETS 

random  I  was  conscious  of  different  impres- 
sions— of  ups  and  downs  of  genius,  of  strange 
inequalities  in  plot  and  structure,  of  a  widely 
different  atmosphere  in  his  plays:  pessimism 
and  optimism,  bitterness  and  gentleness,  pas- 
sionate outcry  and  tranquillity.  What  does 
it  all  mean?  What  is  the  true  inner  life  of 
Shakespeare  which  reflects  itself  in  so  many 
and  in  such  various — nay,  contradictory — 
ways?  Of  course  the  same  thing  is  true  of  all 
poets.  With  some  we  have  plenty  of  material 
at  hand  to  answer  the  question,  such  as  in  the 
case  of  Dante,  Goethe,  Petrarch,  and  Milton. 
In  others  we  have  practically  nothing,  as  in 
the. case  of  Lucretius  and  Homer,  and  can  only 
deduce  the  inner  life  from  their  works  and  a 
few  other  details.  Strangely  enough,  this  is 
the  case  with  Shakespeare,  and  the  conse- 
quence is  that  men  have  had  diametrical  views 
as  to  his  personality  and  genius.  In  my  own 
case,  after  reading  the  plays  carefully  myself, 
after  reading  the  criticisms  of  such  men  as 
Dowden,  Schlegel,  Boas,  Coleridge,  and  Brad- 
ley, I  have  preferred  to  accept  the  larger  view 
of  Shakespeare's  personality.  And  so  to  me 
Shakespeare  means  the  man  who  passed 
through  many  vicissitudes  of  mental  life.  I 
see  him  in  his  early  plays  full  of  the  charm  of 

209 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

life  and  poetry;  then  yielding,  for  some  un- 
known reason,  to  a  deep  pessimism,  in  wMch 
he  wrote  those  terrible  dramas  of  passion, 
sin,  and  death,  full  of  the  unsolvable  prob- 
lems of  life;  and,  finally  issuing  out  upon 
the  more  serene  uplands  of  his  later  life,  feel- 
ing the  infinite  beauty  of  all  things,  yet,  some- 
how, aloof  from  the  world,  which  seems  as 
unreal  to  him  as  it  did  to  Prospero  when  he 
uttered  those  unforgettable  lines,  which  tell 
hO'W 

The  cloud-capped  towers,  the  gorgeous  palaces. 
The  solemn  temples,  the  great  globe  itself — 
Yea,  all  which  it  inherit,  shall  dissolve 
And,  like  this  unsubstantial  pageant  faded, 
Leave  not  a  rack  behind.     We  are  such  stuff 
As  dreams  are  made  on,  and  our  little  life 
Is  rounded  with  a  sleep. 

Yet  one  lack  I  have  found  in  Shakespeare, 
as  I  have  read  him  over  and  over.  He  always 
stops  at  the  edge  of  the  tomb.  He  has  no  ray 
of  light  to  cast  across  the  dark  chasm ;  no  song 
of  hope  and  courage  such  as  Browning  has; 
no  yearning  expression  of  faith,  as  in  Ten- 
nyson's Sunset  and  Evening  Star.  Ortho- 
dox religion  is  not  his,  nor  the  philosophic 
confidence  of  Plato.  Instead  we  see  doubt, 
hesitation,  fear  of  something  beyond  the  grave, 
as  in  Hamlet's  "To  be  or  not  to  be,''  and 

210 


THE  WORLD-POETS 

Claudius's  "Ah,  but  to  die,  and  go  we  know 
not  where/'  And  it  is  just  here  that  the  great, 
supreme  quality  of  Dante  comes  in,  with  his 
wonderful  epitome  of  all  life,  past,  present, 
and  to  come,  and  especially  his  confident  be- 
lief that  God  is  in  his  heaven,  and,  some  time 
or  other,  will  bring  order  and  beauty  out  of 
the  apparent  chaos  of  the  world. 

For  some  reason  or  other  the  one  great  pas- 
sion of  my  life  has  been  the  Divina  Com- 
media.  What  the  reason  is  I  cannot  tell ;  and 
can  only  explain  it  in  the  words  of  Montaigne 
on  his  friendship  for  La  Boetie,  ^^parceque 
&etait  luiy  parceque  c'etait  moi/^  From  my 
earliest  youth  I  have  been  fascinated  by  its 
pages.  Long  before  I  could  understand  most 
of  the  poem  I  would  read  it  with  ever-increas- 
ing delight.  I  was  only  thirteen  years  old 
when  I  first  saw  or  heard  of  the  book.  It  was 
in  the  library  of  the  Young  Men's  Christian 
Association,  and  was  in  Longfellow's  trans- 
lation, three  volumes,  with  brown-paper  cov- 
ers outside  the  binding.  I  remember  the  feel- 
ing of  curiosity  suggested  by  the  words  Di- 
vine Comedy,  but  went  no  further  than  that, 
Three  years  later,  when  I  was  about  sixteen 
years  old,  I  procured  a  copy  of  the  poem  in 
Italian,  as  well  as  in  Cary's  translation,  and  a 

211 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGEAPHY 

grammar  and  dictionary.  With  this  equip- 
ment  I  went  through  the  whole  of  the  Divlna 
Commedia  and  of  the  Vita  Nuova.  For  some 
reason  or  other  I  was  gripped  by  the  power  of 
the  great  Florentine,  and  my  reading,  which  of 
necessity  had  to  be  at  night  after  a  day's  work, 
afforded  me  the  highest  intellectual  pleasure 
I  have  ever  known.  I  remember  especially  one 
night,  about  midnight,  in  the  silence  of 
the  sleep-time,  finishing  the  Vita  Nuova,  and 
the  strange  feeling  of  uplift  as  I  retired  to 
bed  with  the  last  words  ringing  in  my  mind. 
As  the  years  have  gone  by  I  have  read,  re-read, 
studied,  and  taught  Dante;  I  have  gathered  a 
little  Dante  library  of  my  own,  have  consulted 
all  the  best  commentators,  and  ever  more  and 
more  the  wonder  has  grown,  aroused  by  what 
seems  to  me  a  miracle  of  human  greatness. 
There  is  no  better  test  of  the  greatness  of 
supreme  genius  than  its  inexhaustibility;  and 
no  one  stands  this  test  better  than  Dante. 
The  more  one  studies  him,  the  vaster  seems  his 
genius,  the  deeper  his  insight,  the  tenderer  his 
sympathies  for  what  is  good,  his  hate  for  what 
is  wrong.  In  the  ability  to  arouse  the  cosmic 
feeling,  the  sense  of  the  Infinite,  the  "high- 
seriousness"  of  Matthew  Arnold,  he  is  second 
to  none,  if  not  above  all.    It  is  not  the  place 

212 


THE  WORLD-POETS 

here  to  discuss  in  detail  the  greatness  of 
Dante,  to  dwell  on  his  wonderful  architectonic 
genius,  the  unequaled  beauty,  fitness,  and 
many-sided  application  of  his  metaphors,  his 
extraordinary  power  over  language  and  music 
of  verse,  the  prodigious  learning  his  poem 
contains,  enshrined  in  perfect  poetry.  Yet 
it  is  the  man  himself  behind  the  book  that 
gives  to  me  its  perennial  interest.  In  the 
Divine  Comedy  not  only  does  the  form  attain 
the  highest  degTee  of  art,  but  the  subject-mat- 
ter is  the  deepest,  most  profound  of  all 
themes — the  religious  life  of  the  human  soul 
before  and  after  death.  None  but  a  poet  of 
the  highest  genius  could  even  have  thought  of 
such  a  stupendous  plan.  What  an  impressive 
picture  it  is! — the  dark  forest,  the  nine  cir- 
cles of  Hell  with  their  varied  landscapes,  vivid, 
picturesque,  often  horrible:  the  licentious 
blown  about  like  chaff  before  the  wind,  the 
violent  plunged  in  the  river  of  blood,  the 
gnarled  and  knotted  trees  in  the  wood  of  the 
suicides,  the  traitors  in  the  frozen  lake  of 
Cocytus,  and  Lucifer,  with  his  three  heads, 
six  wings,  and  hairy  sides.  And  then  the  slow 
ascent  up  the  steep  sides  of  Purgatory,  the 
lovely  scene  in  the  Valley  of  the  Princes  and 
the  Earthly  Paradise ;  and,  finally,  the  celestial 

213 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

flight  from  star  to  star,  up  to  the  supreme 
vision  of  the  Empyrean.  Thus  the  framework 
of  the  Divina  Commedia  comprises  the  whole 
universe,  as  understood  by  Dante  and  his  con- 
temporaries. Not  only  must  we  admire  the 
breadth  of  his  imagination  in  the  vast  outline 
of  his  work,  but  also  the  wonderful  symmetry 
of  it  all,  the  way  in  which  part  answers  to 
part,  from  beginning  to  end.  But  not  only  is 
Dante's  power  shown  in  the  general  scheme, 
but  likewise  in  the  details  thereof.  In  it  we 
find  practically  the  whole  of  the  Middle  Ages, 
its  history,  its  philosophy,  its  theology,  its 
science,  architecture,  literature ;  the  lives, 
habits,  customs  of  the  people  of  all  classes. 
No  other  poem  has  so  much  learning  woven 
into  it,  and  with  such  consummate  skill;  the 
whole  of  the  scholastic  philosophy,  as  seen  in 
Saint  Thomas  Aquinas,  finds  expression  here, 
with  its  explanation  of  the  origin  of  the  uni- 
verse, the  existence  of  God,  the  embryology, 
birth,  growth,  and  death  of  man,  the  im- 
mortality of  the  soul,  the  life  after  death.  The 
mythology  of  the  ancients,  as  understood  by 
the  medisevals,  is  constantly  referred  to.  The 
history  of  Greece  and  Rome  furnishes  their 
contingent  of  great  men  seen  on  this  stage, 
while  almost  every  man  of  prominence  of  the 

214 


THE  WORLD-POETS 

Middle  Ages  passes  in  and  out  from  time  to 
time — Pope,  emperor,  Guelf  and  Ghibelline, 
citizen  and  peasant;  Gregory  the  Great  and 
Frederick  the  Second ;  the  great  doctors  of  the 
church,  Thomas  Aquinas,  and  Albertus  Mag- 
nus, the  founders  of  the  Franciscan  and  Do- 
minican Orders;  the  first  Italian  painters, 
Cimabue  and   Giotto — all   are  seen  here. 

It  has  been  well  said  that  no  poem  was  ever 
written  which  has  so  many  references  as  the 
Divina  Commedia.  To  read  it  carefully,  to 
look  up  the  many  points  of  reference,  is  a  lib- 
eral education  in  itself.  This,  then,  is  the 
material — a  vast  mass  of  knowledge,  facts, 
thoughts,  emotions,  personal  experiences, 
hopes  and  fears,  hate  and  love,  joy  and  sor- 
row. Out  of  it  came  the  most  marvelous 
literary  product  in  the  world's  literature:  a 
poem  of  consummate  symmetry,  harmony,  and 
beauty,  in  which  every  minutest  detail  occu- 
pies its  true  place  and  proportions;  a  poem 
containing  lyric,  dramatic,  epic,  and  didactic 
elements,  passages  of  lovely  nature-scenes, 
episodes  of  tragic  pathos  and  idyllic  beauty, 
profound  discussions  of  great  questions  of  life 
and  death,  all  couched  in  perfect  style,  mar- 
velously  appropriate  figures  and  metaphors 
— the  whole  marching  with  unfaltering  step 

215 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

from  the  first  canto  to  the  last,  forming  an 
unequaled  example  of  lofty  climax. 

As  I  have  read  the  Divina  Commedia  a  mar- 
velous picture  has  unrolled  itself  before  my 
eyes,  for  it  is  the  reflection  of  the  universe  in 
one  of  the  most  wonderful  minds  that  ever 
lived.  In  it  I  see  the  Platonic  system  of 
astronomy,  the  creation  of  the  world  by  God 
in  his  triune  form  of  Power,  Love,  and  Wis- 
dom; the  angels,  the  celestial  spheres,  the 
earth  and  man  himself,  with  all  his  sins  and 
virtues,  his  material  body,  wide-ranging  in- 
tellect, and  immortal  soul.  I  see  how  man 
fell,  how  he  must  repent,  and  by  what  long 
and  painful  steps  he  must  rise  again.  I  see 
the  different  kinds  of  sins,  public  and  private, 
how  they  are  punished  in  Hell,  and  how  the 
tendency  to  sin  is  purged  in  Purgatory.  I  see 
the  nobility  of  the  righteous  life,  the  beauty 
of  holiness,  and  the  ineffable  joy  and  reward  of 
the  spirits  of  just  men  made  perfect  in  the 
world  to  come.  I  see  the  topography  of  earth, 
Hell,  and  sky;  the  nature  of  the  triune  God. 
the  human  and  divine  in  Christ,  the  undying 
essence  of  the  angels,  the  influence  of  the  stars, 
the  music  of  the  spheres,  the  outflowing 
streams  of  God's  light  and  love.  Then  I  see 
what  God  has  designed  for  earth  itself:  the 

216 


THE  WORLD-POETS 

separation  of  church  and  state  as  exemplified 
in  emperor  and  Pope;  how  the  pride,  avarice, 
and  envy  of  men  have  frustrated  God's  will, 
produced  discord  in  Italy  and  in  the  world, 
and  what  its  remedy  must  be.  I  see  the  church 
with  all  its  hierarchy,  its  foundation,  function, 
saving  power,  degeneracy,  its  reforms.  I  see 
the  psychology  of  man,  his  mixed  earthly  and 
celestial  origin,  his  innate  reaching  out  for 
pleasure,  temptation  and  yielding  to  sin;  his 
fate  on  earth  and  after  death. 

But  I  not  only  see  all  this ;  I  see  how  Dante 
sums  up  his  own  life:  his  thoughts,  feelings, 
knowledge,  and  power;  his  reflections  on  the 
drama  of  mankind  around  him,  with  all  its 
sin  and  vice  and  pride;  the  contumely  that 
patient  merit  of  the  unworthy  takes;  the 
pangs  of  despised  love;  the  law's  delays,  in- 
justice, tyranny,  foul  and  unnatural  vice, 
graft,  and  hypocrisy — all  the  hydra-headed 
monster  of  sin  and  wickedness. 

I  see  his  own  life:  the  innocent  and  happy 

youth  spent  in  the  bella  cittd  on  the  banks  of 

the  Arno ;  his  love  for  the  child  Beatrice ;  her 

death  and  his  going  astray  from  the  life  of 

pure  and  innocent  service  of  God,  to  seek  after 

false  gods ;  how  his  purity  and  ideal  love  was 

lost;  how  he  became  entangled  himself,  per- 
217 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGKAPHY 

haps,  in  sensual  sins;  at  any  rate,  sought 
earthly  learning,  wisdom,  and  glory,  neglect- 
ing the  things  of  religion  and  heavenly  wisdom. 
I  see  him  caught  in  the  political  whirlpool, 
striving  against  the  lower  elements  of  partisan 
life,  incurring  the  enmity  of  Boniface  VIII  and 
Charles  of  Valois,  exiled  and  forbidden  under 
pain  of  death  ever  to  return  to  his  native  city. 
I  see  him  in  the  long  years  of  exile,  wandering 
from  city  to  city,  tasting  how  salt  is  the  bread 
of  others,  how  hard  to  climb  their  stairs.  I 
see  him  at  the  gate  of  Saint  Ilario,  with  the 
roll  of  manuscript  under  his  arm,  travel- 
stained  and  dusty,  and  when  asked  what  he 
wished,  answering,  ^^Peace,  peace.''  I  see  him 
at  Verona,  walking  abstractedly  through  the 
streets,  while  women  pointed  him  out  to  each 
other  as  one  "who  had  been  in  HelP';  I  see 
him  nobly  refusing  to  accept  unworthy  am- 
nesty, crying  out  with  noble  scorn :  "If  Flor- 
ence is  entered  by  no  other  path,  then  never 
will  I  enter  Florence.  What !  Can  I  not  look 
upon  the  face  of  the  sun  and  the  stars  every- 
where? Can  I  not  meditate  anywhere  under 
the  heavens  upon  most  sweet  truths,  unless 
I  first  render  myself  inglorious,  nay,  ignomini- 
ous, to  the  people  and  state  of  Florence?"    I 

see  him  with  new  hope  for  himself  and  Italy, 
218 


THE  WORLD-POETS 

when  Henry  of  Luxemburg  crossed  the  Alps 
to  restore  order  to  the  distracted  empire; 
his  exultation,  his  letters  to  the  city  of  Flor- 
ence and  the  emperor;  and  then,  with  the 
latter's  death,  the  shipwreck  of  all  his  earthly 
hopes,  turning  to  thoughts  of  God  and  the 
other  world,  striving  to  find  his  way,  amid 
the  bewildering  chaos  that  filled  his  own 
fortunes  and  the  world  around  him ;  the  final 
light  that  came,  the  writing  of  his  poem  of 
the  earth  and  air,  and  at  last  his  death  at 
Ravenna.  I  catch  a  glimpse  of  his  inner  life, 
his  vast  learning,  his  unbending  will  where 
right  is  at  stake,  his  tenderness  and  pity 
even  for  the  damned,  his  love  for  nature,  his 
tenderness  for  even  fallen  womanhood,  his 
triumph  and  optimism.  I  see  his  infiuence 
on  the  thought  and  spiritual  life  not  only  of 
Italy  but  of  the  world;  his  share  in  bringing 
about  a  United  Italy,  so  that  his  name  has  be- 
come the  symbol  of  patriotism  for  all  Italy 
to-day. 

Above  all,  I  love  him  for  what  he  has  been 
to  me;  from  my  sixteenth  year  on  to  the  pres- 
ent time,  my  interest  and  passion  for  him  has 
never  faltered ;  it  is  the  strangest  thing  about 
my  inner  life,  and  I  have  never  been  able  to 
explain   the  unconquerable  fascination  that 

219 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

has  chained  me  to  his  pages.  I  have  read  him 
through  practically  every  year ;  I  have  taught 
him  to  hundreds  of  students,  and  have  tried 
to  interpret  him  in  various  forms  of  books 
and  articles.  He  has,  in  a  certain  sense,  di- 
rected my  studies  by  arousing  my  interest  in 
the  history  of  mediaeval  life  and  institutions, 
church  history,  scholasticism.  He  has  colored 
my  whole  view  of  life;  through  his  eyes  I  have 
looked  out  upon  the  world  of  sin  and  crime, 
seeing  its  awful  consequences,  the  hopeless- 
ness of  certain  deeds,  symbolized  in  the  In- 
ferno; I  have  seen  how  we  may,  by  purging 
ourselves  of  pride,  envy,  avarice,  passion, 
alone  insure  ourselves  of  a  happy  life  here 
and  salvation  to  come.  With  him  I  climb 
the  higher  plane  of  the  spirit,  see  God's  way 
with  men,  and  learn  how  we  may  approach 
him.  It  has  been  said  that  no  one  can  study 
reverently  a  great  work  without  being  affected 
by  it  more  or  less.  What  may  be  the  state  of 
my  own  moral  and  spiritual  life  at  present 
I  do  not  know,  but  there  is  no  doubt  in  my 
own  mind  that  it  is  largely  the  result  of  my 
love  for  Dante.  I  too  can  say,  with  Dean 
Church,  that  the  seriousness  of  the  Divine 
Comedy  "has  put  to  shame  my  trifling;  its 
magnanimity,  my  f aint-heartedness ;  its  living 

220 


THE  WORLD-POETS 

energy,  my  indolence;  its  stern  and  sad  gran- 
deur rebuked  low  thoughts,  its  thrilling  ten- 
derness overcome  sullenness  and  assuaged 
distress,  its  strong  faith  quelled  despair  and 
soothed  perplexity,  its  vast  grasp  imparted 
the  sense  of  harmony  to  the  view  of  clashing 
truths.''  I  too  have  found  in  time  of  trouble, 
"if  not  light,  at  least  the  deep  sense  of  reality, 
permanent  though  unseen,  which  is  more  than 
light  can  always  give,  in  the  view  which  it 
has  suggested  to  them  of  the  judgment  and 
the  love  of  God." 

But,  above  all,  I  owe  to  Dante  a  glimpse 
into  his  own  lofty  view  of  the  ultimate  goal 
of  the  intellectual  life;  the  true  object  and  the 
reward  of  all  seeking  after  truth.  The  Divine 
Comedy  is  not  only  a  marvel  of  architectonic 
genius  as  to  its  outer  form,  in  which  every 
part,  however  small,  is  perfectly  fitted  into 
the  whole,  but  it  is  suffused  through  and 
through  with  one  ever-present,  all-pervading 
ideal.  Knowledge  is  the  one  thing  for  which 
the  mind  and  soul  of  men  are  created ;  and  he 
best  fulfills  his  mission  in  this  world  who 
spends  his  life  in  the  high  pursuit  of  truth. 
And  this  pursuit  will  lead  him  ever  onward 
and  upward,  from  the  lower  to  the  higher, 
from  the  corruptible  things  of  this  earth  to 

221 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

the  eternal  beauty  of  the  heayenly  mansion, 
through  which  he  is  led  to  the  highest  knowl- 
edge of  all,  that  of  the  power,  light,  and  love 
of  God.  And  this  knowledge  is  not  to  be  for 
ourselves  alone;  it  is  inextricably  mingled 
with  love — love  of  nature  which  is  God's  cre- 
ation ;  love  of  all  men  who  are  God's  children ; 
love  of  God  himself.  And  from  this  union 
of  knowledge  and  love  springs  the  third  ele- 
ment of  the  sublime  trinity  of  Dante's  ideal — 
joy  unspeakable,  far  beyond  all  joys  of  sense 
or  mere  intellect;  joy  in  the  life  that  now  is, 
joy  that  will  be  eternal  in  the  life  to  come. 
I  have  found  and  loved  many  beautiful  lines 
of  poetry  in  my  lifetime,  but  for  music  and 
rhythm  and  all  the  other  outward  forms  of 
art,  and  especially  in  the  wonderful  leading 
out  into  the  realm  of  the  ideal,  to  me — and 
I  say  it  with  due  deliberation — to  me,  the 
most  beautiful  lines  in  all  literature  are  those 
in  which  Dante  sums  up  the  essence,  not  only 
of  the  Divine  Comedy,  not  only  of  his  own  life, 
or  the  collective  life  of  humanity  itself,  but  of 
the  whole  universe : 

Luce  inteUetual  plena  d'Amore — 
Amor  del  vero  ben  pien  di  Letizia, 
Letizia  che  trascende  ogni  Dolzore. 
Intellectual  life  full  of  Love — love  of  the  true  good,  full 
of  joy,  joy  that  transcends  all  other  sweetness. 
222 


WHAT  BOOKS  HAVE  DONE  FOR  ME 


223 


Nor  can  I  not  believe  but  that  hereby- 
Great  gains  are  mine;  for  thus  I  live  remote 
From  evil-speaking;  rancor,  never  sought. 

Comes  to  me  not;  malignant  truth,  or  lie. 

Hence  have  I  genial  seasons,  hence  have  I 

Smooth     passions,     smooth     discourse,     and     joyous 

thought; 
And  thus  from  day  to  day  my  little  boat 

Rocks  in  its  harbor,  lodging  peaceably. 

— Wordsworth, 


224 


CHAPTER  VII 
What  Books  Have  Done  for  Me 

As  I  look  back  over  the  years  of  my  book 
life  I  see  them  brightened  by  many  happy 
experiences;  but  the  greatest  intellectual 
pleasures  have  come  in  these  later  years,  when 
I  have  been  going  over  again  the  whole 
field  of  my  reading  and  studies,  with  the  pur- 
pose of  broadening  and  deepening  whatever 
knowledge  I  may  have  obtained.  I  have  been 
reading  over  again  the  same  books,  many  of 
which  delighted  me  when  young,  but  which 
have  gradually  acquired  a  deeper  and  fuller 
meaning  for  me,  for  they  are  read  now  with  a 
definite  purpose,  a  purpose  which  I  cannot 
describe  better  than  in  the  words  of  Schopen- 
hauer, who  was  wont  to  say  that  he  visited 
the  picture  gallery  of  Dresden,  not  to  study 
art,  but  to  learn  the  lessons  they  had  to  give 
of  the  meaning  of  life  and  the  value  of  things. 

And  with  this  change  of  purpose  has  come 
another  change,  that  is,  in  the  time  of  day 
when  I  can  do  my  best  work.    For  many  years 

225 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGEAPHY 

I  had  made  it  my  practice  to  read  far  into  the 
night.  This  was  necessary  in  my  younger 
years,  especially  before  I  went  to  college,  for 
the  night  was  about  the  only  leisure  time  I 
had  to  devote  to  books.  It  was  often  difficult 
for  me  to  keep  awake  after  a  hard  day's  work, 
and  I  had  to  resort  to  such  well-known  devices 
as  wrapping  a  wet  towel  about  my  head.  But 
after  nine  o'clock  all  this  drowsiness  would 
pass  away.  My  mind  would  take  on  an  al- 
most abnormal  freshness  and  clearness,  and 
I  suppose  I  have  never  had  such  pure,  unal- 
loyed intellectual  pleasure  as  when,  in  the 
quiet  of  the  midnight  hour,  I  would  see  unroll 
before  my  delighted  eyes  the  great  spectacle 
of  the  world,  as  it  was  reflected  in  the  books 
of  history,  philosophy,  and  poetry  I  read. 

But  this  kind  of  work  resulted,  more  or  less 
often,  in  a  nervous  strain,  so  that  in  these 
later  years,  when  night  work  is  no  longer 
necessary,  I  have  changed  all  this,  and  have 
adopted  the  habit  of  retiring  and  rising  early, 
in  order  to  get  in  some  reading  before  the 
duties  of  the  day  really  begin.  And  the  ex- 
perience of  these  early  morning  hours  is  at 
least  as  inspiring  and,  I  think,  more  whole- 
some than  that  described  above.  The  books 
I  read  then  are  those  which  I  have  gone  over 

226 


WHAT  BOOKS  HAVE  DONE  FOR  ME 

so  often  that  the  general  drift  of  them  is 
familiar  to  me,  and  the  pages  of  which  are 
underscored  and  starred  and  double-starred. 
So  that  as  I  turn  page  after  page,  and  read 
especially  the  marked  passages,  I  can  catch 
in  a  moment  the  context.  Above  all,  my 
mind  is  kindled  by  the  deep  thoughts,  high 
aspirations,  and  beautiful  language  of  poet 
and  philosopher.  Every  year  I  have  succeeded 
in  thus  going  over  the  great  poets  from  Homer 
to  Tennyson,  as  well  as  my  favorites  among 
the  great  prose  writers  from  Plato  to  Emerson. 
It  is  wonderful  how  much  ground  one  can 
cover  in  this  way.  Half  an  hour  a  day  with  a 
book,  in  which  the  great  passages  are  under- 
lined, will  carry  a  man  fast  and  far  through 
the  world's  literature.  And  the  pleasure  that 
comes,  who  can  describe  it?  To  rise  on  a 
winter  morning,  just  before  the  dawn;  to  see 
the  sky  brightening  in  the  east;  to  feel  the 
hush  and  quiet  of  the  world  all  about,  a  world 
in  which,  for  the  time  being,  all  sin  and  vice, 
all  envy,  hate,  passion,  and  bitter  strife  are 
laid  asleep ;  and  then  to  penetrate  with  Homer 
into  the  beautiful  life  of  early  Greece  and  the 
youth  of  the  world;  to  mount  with  Plato 
to  the  serene  regions  of  the  world  of  the  Ideal ; 
or  with  Shakespeare  to  look  out  over  the  won- 

227 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

\ 
derful  spectacle  of  this  human  life  of  ours, 

which,  though  at  times  it  seems  so  sad  and 

tragic,  is  yet  full  of  the  beautiful  and  the 

strange. 

And  so  reading  has  come  to  mean  to  me  not 
merely  amusement,  curiosity,  a  means  of  cul- 
ture or  investigation,  but  a  vision  of  the 
wonderful  history  of  the  world  of  nature  and 
man.  It  is  this  larger  kind  of  reading  which 
has  brought  to  my  maturer  life  its  best  com- 
fort and  deepest  peace.  Far  from  the  busy 
scenes  of  life,  without  any  of  the  so-called 
prizes  of  life,  in  my  study  high  above  the  banks 
of  the  Connecticut  River,  whence  I  can  see 
on  its  breast  the  boats  that  make  their  way  to 
the  great  metropolis,  I  sit  as  in  some  lofty 
tower,  gazing  quietly  out  upon  the  great  world- 
spectacle.  Every  clear  morning  in  winter 
time  I  see  the  ever-wonderful  spectacle  of  the 
dawn  of  a  new  day.  Looking  up  from  time  to 
time  from  the  book,  I  gaze  at  the  brightening 
east,  only  for  a  few  moments,  however,  for  my 
work  calls  me  back.  But  these  few  minutes 
are  like  a  bath  to  my  soul;  they  give  a  tone 
to  the  whole  day,  a,  glimpse  of  the  Infinite  to 
bear  me  through  the  petty  details  of  life. 

Then  at  the  end  of  the  day  I  sit  in  that  large 
upper  chamber  of  mine,  whose  windows  look 

228 


WHAT  BOOKS  HAVE  DONE  FOR  ME 

out  toward  the  setting  sun,  and  watch  through 
them  the  infinite  variety  of  sunlight  and 
shadow  and  cloud  effect,  seen  through  the 
bare  branches  of  the  elm  trees  over  the  college 
buildings  beyond,  where  the  crimson  flood 
ebbs  away.  I  watch  the  colors  grow  dim — 
darker  and  darker — till  twilight  comes  on. 
Sometimes  I  sit  for  an  hour  in  the  semidark- 
ness,  surrounded  by  the  spirit  whose  dwelling 
is  the  light  of  setting  suns,  and  as  the  deep 
rest  and  peace  come  over  me,  I  sit  and  hush 
and  bless  myself  in  silence.  And  so  many  a 
day  of  hard  work — of  study,  teaching,  investi- 
gation, Avriting — is  ushered  in  and  out  by  the 
flow  and  ebb  of  the  light  of  the  sun. 

Many  times,  as  I  sit  in  this  evening  twilight 
on  a  winter  afternoon,  I  look  back  over  my 
life  and  number  up  the  things  I  have  to  be 
grateful  for.  I  must  confess  that  among  them 
all,  none  occupies  a  higher  place  than  books. 
And  Avliy  should  I  not  be  grateful  to  them? 
To  them  I  owe  many  and  many  an  hour  of 
intellectual  and  spiritual  pleasure  in  the  days 
that  are  gone.  I  have  had  my  struggles  and 
hardships,  hours  of  gloom  and  discourage- 
ment, yet  through  them  all  my  heart  has  been 
lightened  and  cheered  by  the  books  I  have 
read.    They  too  have  furnished  my  mind  with 

229 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

the  noblest  pictures  of  life  and  the  universe, 
and  in  my  own  humble  way  I  can  say,  as  it 
was  said  of  the  English  Platonist  Henry 
More,  that  my  heart  was  uplifted  by  the  no- 
blest themes  in  the  morning  of  my  days. 

To  my  love  for  reading  I  have  owed  many 
an  hour  of  "happy  thinking,"  as  Hazlitt  puts 
it,  even  when  far  from  books  and  all  things 
pertaining  to  them.  To  them  I  owe  my  lot 
in  life,  a  lot  that  I  can  with  grateful  sincerity 
call  a  happy  one,  whatever  elements  of  suc- 
cess or  failure  may  have  attended  it.  When  a 
man  has  work  in  which  he  finds  delightful 
occupation,  which  of  itself  implies  as  a  duty 
an  ever-increasing  effort  to  obtain  a  knowledge 
and  a  true  outlook  on  life,  which  gives  him 
the  opportunity  to  help  others,  and  the  chance, 
whether  he  embraces  it  or  not,  of  winning  the 
kindly  regard  of  young  men,  ought  he  not 
to  be  happy,  even  though  from  the  financial 
point  of  view  he  may  be  classed  among  those 
whom  the  world  calls  unsuccessful  men? 

An  editorial  in  a  New  York  paper  said  the 
other  day,  speaking  of  the  question  of  equal 
pay  to  male  and  female  teachers,  "Let  the 
women  teach  and  the  men  go  to  work.''  Well, 
if  teaching  is  not  a  man's  job,  then  I'm  not 
a  man.    For  it's  the  only  thing  I  care  for,  and 

230 


WHAT  BOOKS  HAVE  DONE  FOE  ME 

I  suppose  about  the  only  thing  I'm  fit  for. 
And  yet  I  am  foolish  enough  to  think  that  the 
work  I  love  so  well,  and  to  which  I  have  been 
led  by  what  seems  to  me  at  times  almost  special 
providence,  does  not  merit  the  contempt  so 
often  poured  upon  it  by  the  so-called  practical 
men  of  the  world.  At  any  rate  I  would  not 
exchange  my  lot  for  that  of  any  of  them  all. 
Many  a  time,  when  I  have  passed  through  the 
crowded  streets  of  the  great  metropolis  and 
have  taken  my  seat  in  the  train  that  brings 
me  home  again,  has  my  heart  cried  out  with 
Emerson : 

Good-by,  proud  world,  I'm  going  home! 
Thou  art  not  my  friend  and  I'm  not  thine. 
I'm  going  to  my  own  hearth-stone. 
Bosomed  in  yon  green  fields  alone; 
A  secret  nook  in  a  pleasant  land. 
Oh,  when  I  am  safe  in  my  sylvan  home, 
I  tread  on  the  pride  of  Greece  and  Rome. 
And  when  I  am  stretched  beneath  the  pines. 
Where  the  evening  star  so  holy  shines, 
I  laugh  at  the  love  and  the  pride  of  man. 
For  what  are  they  all  in  their  high  conceit. 
When  man  in  the  bush  with  God  may  meet? 

Again,  to  books  too  I  owe  a  contented  mind. 
I  suppose  it  may  seem  to  many  that  I  may  lack 
ambition.  At  any  rate,  I  have  never  felt  an 
overwhelming  desire  either  to  be  wealthy  or 
famous  or  prominent  in  the  social,  political, 

231 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

or  even  professional  world.  I. prize  far  more 
that  love  for  nature  which  makes  a  walk  in 
the  country  on  a  winter's  afternoon,  or  beside 
the  sea,  or  among  the  snowy  Alps,  a  thing 
of  beauty  and  a  joy  forever.  Nay,  which 
brings  the  same  experience  to  my  very  door, 
for  I  no  longer  need  to  travel  to  distant 
scenes  and  strange  landscapes  to  receive  the 
blessing  that  nature  has  to  give.  How  many 
a  time  have  I  walked  of  an  afternoon  out 
toward  the  west,  with  a  strange  going-out  of 
my  soul  beneath  the  mysterious  influence  of 
the  setting  sun!  How  many  times  have  I 
caught  a  sudden  vision  of  all  this  wonderful 
world  of  ours,  when  I  felt  almost  physically 
the  earth  "a  spinning  on  its  nave,''  and  sheer- 
ing blindly  round  the  sun,  with  its  snow- 
capped mountains,  lordly  rivers,  sylvan  groves, 
and  grassy  lawns;  its  countless  towns  and 
cities,  inhabited  by  generation  after  genera- 
tion of  men  and  women,  living,  suffering,  lov- 
ing, and  dying  under  the  same  silent  heavens; 
diiferent  in  speech  and  fashion  of  dress,  yet 
all  with  the  same  hopes  and  fears,  the  same 
love  and  hate,  the  same  clinging  to  life  and 
shrinking  from  death,  the  same  passionate 
yearning  for  the  life  that  never  ends ! 

To  books  I   owe  likewise  the  intellectual 

232 


WHAT  BOOKS  HAVE  DONE  FOR  ME 

possessions  that  are  stored  in  my  mind;  such 
dear  pictures,  as  Goethe  calls  them,  constantly 
renewed  in  my  imagination  as  they  keep  ever 
transforming  themselves  and  ripening  toward 
a  clearer  shape. 

We  are  all  of  us  creatures  of  moods,  and  I 
suppose  that  my  own  state  of  nervous  insta- 
bility is  at  least  equal  to  that  of  others.  From 
boyhood 

As  high,  as  I  have  mounted  in  delight, 
In  my  dejection  have  I  sunk  as  low. 

I  too  have  had  my  disappointments  and  sad- 
ness, hopes  deceived,  ^^greetings  where  no 
kindness  is,"  loss  of  friends  and  the  thought 
of  the  all-encompassing  darkness  beyond.  I  too 
have  felt  with  Euskin  that  double  side  to  all 
things  connected  with  life  and  the  world ;  that 
strange  antithesis  in  nature,  at  times  soft  and 
beautiful,  full  of  charm  and  solace  for  the 
weary  soul;  again  stern  and  pitiless  with  its 
awful  catastrophes,  involving  the  destruction 
of  whole  cities  and  multitudes  of  men,  women, 
and  children;  the  equally  strange  antithesis 
in  that  love  of  man  for  woman,  at  times  so 
infinitely  beautiful,  turning  "life's  tasteless 
waters  into  wine,''  and  yet  with  its  darker  side 
of  lust,  bloodshed,  cruelty,  and  vice;  so  too 
the  antithe'Sis  which  makes  mankind  appear  at 
233 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

times  an  inspiring  spectacle,  with  its  constant 
advance  toward  freedom,  its  philanthropy,  Its 
sacrifice  of  life  itself  for  the  good  of  one's 
fellow  men ;  and  yet  with  the  sordidness  of  pov- 
erty, the  arrogance  of  wealth,  the  nameless 
crimes  that  stain  the  annals  of  rich  and  poor 
alike — so  much  envy,  so  much  vanity,  so  much 
meanness  and  hardness  of  heart ! 

Which  of  these  moods  is  the  true  one? 
Which  shall  I  take  as  the  guide  of  my  life? 
And  here  it  is  that  I  owe  to  books,  perhaps,  the 
greatest  blessings  of  all  they  have  given  me, 
the  development  of  whatever  religious  and 
spiritual  life  I  may  possess.  Naturally  in- 
clined to  religion,  perhaps  even  to  mysticism, 
as  an  inheritance  from  Quaker  ancestors; 
brought  up  by  a  mother  whose  one  thing  in 
life  was  her  Bible  and  her  prayers,  trained 
from  early  childhood  in  the  class  meeting  and 
prayer  meeting  of  the  Methodist  Church,  in 
the  days  when  these  things  were  real  and  vital ; 
as  the  years  have  gone  on,  I  have  found  my 
religious  life  deepened,  although  possibly  the 
limits  of  mere  denominationalism  have  been 
widened.  The  reading  of  such  books  as  the 
Bible,  Plato,  Emerson,  Wordsworth,  Brown- 
ing has  had  a  certain  definite  effect  upon  my 
inner  life.     I  have  come  at  times  to  have  an 

234 


WHAT  BOOKS  HAVE  DONE  FOR  ME 

almost  physical  sense  of  the  great  abstract 
ideas:  love,  as  it  shows  itself  in  the  relation 
of  mother  and  child,  husband  and  wife,  friend 
and  friend ;  nay,  which  looks  on  the  hills  with 
tenderness,  and  flows  out  to  all  living  and 
innanimate  things;  beauty  spread  over  all 
things,  that  shines  in  the  eyes  of  the  little 
child  gazing  at  life  with  dimly  felt  surprise, 
that  sits  enthroned  on  the  soft  cheeks  of  the 
maiden,  that  breathes  forth  from  flower  and 
grass,  hovers  in  the  light  of  sunrise  and  sun- 
set, envelops  the  whole  world  of  snowy  moun- 
tains, restless  sea,  and  starry  universe  as  with 
a  mantle.  As  I  have  seen  how  the  great  poets 
and  thinkers  have  invariably  turned  aside 
from  the  tragic  side  of  life,  seeing  even  on 
^^death's  cloud  the  rainbow  of  the  soul,"  how 
they  have  allowed  their  imagination  to  linger 
over  the  inspiring  forms  that  people  the  realm 
of  the  ideal,  where  alone  is  "immortal  hilarity, 
the  rose  of  joy,  around  which  all  the  muses 
sing,''  I  have  come  to  believe  that  this  attitude 
is  not  only  the  true  one  in  all  the  highest  forms 
of  art,  but  is  the  part  of  wisdom  in  the  conduct 
of  life  itself ;  that  the  optimist  is  more  rational 
than  the  pessimist ;  that  only  by  looking  on  the 
bright  side  can  we  live  and  develop  our  highest 
powers ;  that  it  is  not  our  duty  to  brood  over 

235 


A  ONE-SIDED  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

sickness  and  poverty  and  crime  and  death ;  but, 
rather,  to  think  constantly  over  the  joys"  of 
loving  friends,  of  nature,  and  of  the  intellec- 
tual life;  and,  finally,  to  rise  with  all  the  en- 
ergy of  our  souls  to  a  belief  in  God  and  a  hap- 
pier life  beyond.  All  philosophy,  all  art,  all 
religion  is  based  on  this  turning  of  the  eye  of 
the  soul  toward  the  sunlight  of  the  ideal, 
where  the  unifying  principle  of  the  spiritual 
world  takes  the  multitudinous  fragments  of 
the  many  and  forms  them  into  one  perfect 
whole : 

The  One  remains,  the  many  change  and  pass. 
Heaven's  light  endures,  earth's  shadows  flee; 

Time,  like  a  dome  of  many-colored  glass. 
Stains  the  white  radiancy  of  eternity. 


236 


CATTFORA^T* 


Return  .o  desk  from  «hid.  bonrowed. 
TBi,.^risI.«Eo>.a.eUs.aa«»».pedWo». 


27Dec' 
27Dec'48P3 


JUL  3 


ffcro 


orc 


C^JPt       J^^ 


iO'16 


LD21 


.-100m-9,'48(B399sl6)476 


U.C.  BERKELEY  LIBRARIES 


CDSM7flflmb 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CAIvlFORNIA  IvIBRARY 


